AN-INTRODUCTION-TO 

THE- POEMS  OF 

TENNYSON 


HENKY- VAN -DYKE 


BERKELEY 

LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA    . 


AN   INTRODUCTION   TO   THE 
POEMS   OF  TENNYSON 


BY 


HENRY  VAN   DYKE,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in 
Princeton  University 


Boston,  U.S.A.,  and  London 
GINN  &   COMPANY,  PUBLISHERS 

1903 


Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall 


Copyright,  1903 
By   henry  van  DYKE 


all  rights  reserved 


PREFACE 

The  essays  here  presented  were  prepared  to  accompany  a 
volume  of  select  poems  of  Tennyson  in  the  Athenaeum  Press 
Series.  My  object  in  writing  them  was  to  show  the  growth 
of  the  poet's  mind  and  art,  the  methods  which  he  followed, 
the  variety  of  his  work,  and  the  chief  qualities  which  mark 
his  poetry.  Studies  of  this  kind  may  have  an  interest,  and 
possibly  some  value,  for  students  of  English  verse  in  general. 
For  this  reason  —  I  may  say  with  this  hope  —  they  are  printed, 
with  a  few  changes,  in  this  little  volume. 

HENRY  VAN    DYKE. 

AVALON,  August  I,   1903. 


950 


CONTENTS 

I.   Tennyson's  Place  in  the  Nineteenth  Century.        .         i 
II,   An  Outline  of  Tennyson's  Life 9 

III.  Tennyson's  Use  of  his  Sources 27 

IV.  Tennyson's  Revision  of  his  Text 47 

V.  The  Qualities  of  Tennyson's  Poetry  .        .        .        -63 


I 

TENNYSON'S    PLACE   IN    THE 
NINETEENTH   CENTURY 


"  The  voice  of  him  the  master  and  the  sire 
Of  one  whole  age  and  legion  of  the  lyre, 
Who  sang  his  morning-song  when  Coleridge  still 
Uttered  dark  oracles  from  Highgate  Hill, 
And  with  new  launched  argosies  of  rhyme 
Gilds  and  makes  brave  this  sombreing  tide  of  time. 

To  him  nor  tender  nor  heroic  muse 

Did  her  divine  confederacy  refuse  : 

To  all  its  moods  the  lyre  of  life  he  strung, 

And  notes  of  death  fell  deathless  from  his  tongue, 

Himself  the  Merlin  of  his  magic  strain. 

He  bade  old  glories  break  in  bloom  again ; 

And  so,  exempted  from  oblivious  gloom, 

Through  him  these  days  shall  fadeless  break  in  bloom." 

William  Watson,  1892. 


TENNYSON'S    PLACE    IN    THE    NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 

Tennyson  seems  to  us,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Twentieth 
Century,  the  most  representative  poet  of  the  EngHsh  race 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century.  Indeed  it  is  doubtful  whether 
any  other  writer  during  the  last  hundred  years  has  reflected 
so  clearly  and  so  broadly,  in  verse  or  prose,  the  features  of 
that  composite  age.  The  history  of  its  aspirations  and  con- 
flicts, its  dreams  and  disappointments,  its  aesthetic  revivals  and 
scientific  discoveries,  its  questioning  spirit  in  religion  and  its 
dogmatic  spirit  in  practical  affairs,  its  curious  learning  and 
social  enthusiasms  and  miUtary  reactions,  its  ethical  earnest- 
ness, and  its  ever  deepening  and  broadening  human  sympathy, 
may  be  read  in  the  poetry  of  Tennyson. 

Other  poets  may  reflect  some  particular  feature  of  the  cen- 
tury more  fully,  but  it  is  because  they  reflect  it  more  exclu- 
sively. Thus  Byron  stands  for  the  spirit  of  revolt  against 
tyranny,  Shelley  for  the  dream  of  universal  brotherhood, 
Keats  for  the  passionate  love  of  pure  beauty,  Matthew  Arnold 
for  the  sadness  of  parting  with  ancient  faiths,  and  Rudyard 
Kipling  expresses  the  last  phase  of  the  century,  the  revival  of 
militant  imperialism,  perhaps  as  well  as  it  can  be  uttered  in 
verse. 

Wordsworth  and  Robert  Browning  are  the  only  British  poets 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  beside  Tennyson,  who  have  the 
breadth  of  view,  the  sane  vigour  and  balance  of  mind,  the 
penetration  and  the  self-control,  the  well-rounded  and  mature 

3 


4  TENNYSON'S    PLACE 

manhood,  which  entitle  them  to  be  regarded  as  general  voices 
of  their  age.  In  each  of  them  there  is  a  certain  power  devel- 
oped to  an  extraordinary  intensity,  —  greater,  I  think,  than 
we  shall  find  in  Tennyson.  But  at  the  same  time,  it  seems  to 
me  true  that  each  has  certain  defects  from  which  Tennyson  is 
comparatively  free. 

Wordsworth  is  perhaps  the  deepest  and  the  steadiest  thinker 
of  the  three.  He  has  a  very  wide  range  of  meditative  sympa- 
thy, and  his  work  has  therefore  a  broad  human  significance. 
But  his  range  of  imaginative  sympathy,  the  sphere  within 
which  he  feels  intensely  and  speaks  vividly,  is  limited  by  his 
own  individuaUty,  deep,  strong,  unyielding,  by  his  political 
opinions  and  prejudices,  and  by  his  secluded  hfe  among  the 
mountains  of  Westmoreland.  When  he  moves  along  his  own 
line  his  work  shines  with  a  singular  and  unclouded  lustre ;  at 
other  times  his  genius  fails  to  penetrate  his  material  with  the 
light  of  poesy.  Much  of  his  verse,  serious  and  sincere,  rep- 
resents Wordsworth's  reflections  upon  life,  rather  than  the 
reflection  of  life  in  Wordsworth's  poetry.  In  the  art  of  verse, 
too,  perfect  as  he  is  in  certain  forms,  such  as  the  sonnet,  the 
simple  lyric,  the  stately  ode,  his  mastery  is  far  from  wide.  In 
narrative  he  seldom  moves  with  swiftness  or  certainty ;  in  the 
use  of  dramatic  motives  to  intensify  a  lyric,  a  ballad,  an  idyl, 
he  has  little  skill. 

Robert  Browning,  on  the  other  hand,  is  probably  the  great- 
est dramatist  of  the  three.  In  fact  almost  all  his  best  work  is 
essentially  dramatic  in  spirit.  That  is  to  say,  he  apprehends 
life  under  the  aspect  of  a  conflict,  a  struggle  between  oppos- 
ing wills,  a  strife  of  the  individual  against  society,  a  warfare  of 
man  with  circumstance.  The  crises  in  this  struggle  are  the 
points  where  Browning  finds  his  favourite  subjects.  His  intel- 
lectual curiosity  is  immense.  His  interest  in  the  concrete 
problems  of  human  experience   is  vivid   and   inexhaustible. 


IN    THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY  5 

He  has  the  quickest  and  the  keenest  eye  for  the.  sharp  details 
of  life  and  knows  how  to  make  the  little  points  in  a  face,  in  a 
scene,  stand  out  unforgettable.  His  stage  is  crowded  with  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men  and  women.  There  is  hardly  any 
sphere  of  human  activity  or  passion  into  which  he  has  not 
entered.  But  almost  everywhere,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  it  is 
not  so  much  another  character  as  it  is  Browning  himself,  trans- 
planted to  another  age,  another  environment,  who  discloses 
to  us  his  own  feelings  in  his  own  speech.  And  that  speech  is 
peculiar,  almost  to  the  extent  of  deserving  to  be  classed  as  a 
distinct  dialect.  There  are  times,  indeed,  when  he  writes  the 
very  best  of  EngUsh,  clear,  nervous,  natural.  But  too  often 
his  style  is  corrugated  and  congested ;  rough  to  the  point  of 
painfulness.  This  obscurity  of  manner,  maintained  with  a 
touch  of  what  seems  almost  like  obstinacy,  is  not  only  a  barrier 
which  makes  it  difficult  for  the  average  man  to  understand 
Browning.  It  is  also  the  sign  of  a  certain  attitude  of  inde- 
pendence, an  isolation  of  mind,  which  hinders  him,  with  all 
his  breadth  of  interest  in  human  life,  from  receiving  and  reflect- 
ing in  poetry  the  general  thought  and  feeHng  of  his  age. 
Thus,  for  example,  the  great  conception  of  evolution,  an 
orderly  progress  from  lower  to  higher  forms,  a  slow  develop- 
ment of  the  race  under  the  control  of  law,  does  not  really 
pervade  his  poetry,  though  it  was  undoubtedly  the  dominant 
idea  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.  Browning's  stress  is  laid 
upon  the  individual,  not  upon  the  race.  The  moment  of 
intense  passion,  of  assertion,  of  action,  —  this  is  what  he  values 
most.  Though  so  modern  in  many  ways,  in  his  central  motive 
he  is  not  in  complete  touch  with  the  controlling  spirit  of  his 
own  times ;  he  is  almost  reactionary,  mediaeval. 

But  Tennyson,  at  least  in  the  maturity  of  his  powers,  has 
not  only  a  singularly  receptive  and  responsive  mind,  open  on 
all  sides  to  impressions  from  nature,  from  books,  and  from 


6  TENNYSON'S    PLACE 

human  life  around  him,  and  an  imaginative  sympathy,  which 
makes  itself  at  home  and  works  dramatically  in  an  extraordi- 
nary range  of  characters  :  he  has  also  a  wonderful  mastery  of 
the  technics  of  the  poetic  art,  which  enables  him  to  give  back 
in  a  fitting  form  of  beauty  the  subject  which  his  genius  has 
taken  into  itself.  No  other  English  poet  since  the  Eliza- 
bethan age  has  used  so  many  kinds  of  verse  so  well.  None 
other  has  shown  in  his  work  a  sensitiveness  to  the  movements 
of  his  own  time  at  once  so  delicate  and  so  broad.  To  none 
other  has  it  been  given  to  write  with  undimmed  eye  and  undi- 
minished strength  for  so  long  a  period  of  time,  and  thus  to 
translate  into  poetry  so  many  of  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
the  century  in  which  he  lived. 

Whether  a  temperament  so  receptive,  and  an  art  so  versa- 
tile, as  Tennyson's,  are  characteristic  of  the  highest  order  of 
genius,  is  an  open  question,  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  decide 
nor  even  to  discuss  here.  Certainly  it  would  be  absurd  to 
maintain  that  his  success  in  dealing  with  all  subjects  and  in 
all  forms  of  verse  is  equal.  His  dramas,  for  instance,  do  not 
stand  in  the  first  rank.  His  two  epics.  The  Princess  and  Idylls 
of  the  King,  have  serious  defects,  the  one  in  structure,  the 
other 'in  substance. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  broad  scope  of  his  poetic  inter- 
est and  the  variety  as  well  as  the  general  felicity  of  his  art, 
helped  to  make  him  the  most  popular  poet  of  his  time  and 
race.  Tennyson  has  something  for  everybody.  He  is  easy 
to  read.  He  has  charm.  Thus  he  has  found  a  wide  audi- 
ence, and  his  poetry  has  not  only  reflected,  but  powerfully 
influenced,  the  movements  of  his  age.  The  poet  whose  words 
are  quoted  is  a  constant,  secret  guide  of  sentiment  and  con- 
duct. The  man  who  says  a  thing  first  may  be  more  original ; 
he  who  says  it  best  is  more  potent.  The  characters  which 
Tennyson  embodied  in  his  verse  became   memorable.     The 


IN    THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY  7 

ideals  which  he  expressed  in  music  grew  more  clear  and 
beautiful  and  familiar  to  the  hearts  of  men,  leading  them 
insensibly  forward.  The  main  current  of  thought  and  feeling 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  at  least  among  the  English-speak- 
ing peoples,  —  the  slow,  steady,  onward  current  of  admiration, 
desire,  hope,  aspiration,  and  endeavour,  —  followed  the  line 
traced  in  the  poetry  of  Tennyson. 

This  very  fact,  it  seems  to  me,  makes  it  easy  to  undervalue 
Tennyson  at  the  present  time.  His  ideas  have  become  part 
of  the  common  stock.  His  ways  of  expressing  them  have 
been  imitated  until  their  freshness  is  gone.  His  phrases 
and  turns  of  speech  are  current  coin.  The  beauty  of  the 
image,  the  clearness  of  the  inscription,  no  longer  awaken  won- 
der. Many  people  recognize  originality  only  in  the  form  of 
novelty.  There  is  also  a  perverse  school  of  criticism  which 
holds  that  nothing  which  is  popular  can  be  really  great  in 
poetry.  The  fame  of  Tennyson,  at  all  events,  has  suffered 
a  slight  obscuration  in  certain  literary  quarters,  and  the 
endurance  of  his  work  is  questioned. 

No  doubt  the  day  when  everything  that  he  wrote  was  sure 
of  an  immediate  welcome  by  tens  of  thousands  of  eager  read- 
ers, has  passed.  In  the  mass  of  his  work,  so  copious  and  so 
varied,  —  lyrical  poems,  ballads,  English  idyls,  elegies,  war- 
songs,  love-songs,  dramas,  poems  of  art,  classical  imitations, 
dramatic  monologues,  fairy-tales,  patriotic  poems,  idyls  of 
chivalry,  dramas,  odes,  character  studies,  rhapsodies  of  faith, 
—  there  are  degrees  of  excellence.  Some  of  it  will  prove  to 
have  only  what  Emerson  calls  a  "  deciduous  "  charm.  Some 
of  it  will  look  dull  and  bare  when  the  transient  interest 
derived  from  its  close  relation  and  reference  to  "questions 
of  the  hour  "  has  dropped  away.  Some  of  it,  perhaps,  will 
even  become  obscure  or  unintelligible  to  the  plain  reader, 
as  the  fashion  of  our  English  speech  slowly  changes. 


8      TENNYSON'S  PLACE  IN  THE  19TH  CENTURY 

But  that  a  considerable  body  of  his  best  work  will  endure, 
and  will  be  not  only  praised  by  students  of  English  verse, 
but  also  read  by  lovers  of  poetry  for  its  own  sake,  it  is  hardly 
possible  to  doubt.  For  many  generations  to  come  these  most 
characteristic  poems  of  Tennyson,  signed,  as  we  may  say,  not 
merely  with  his  name  but  with  the  mark  of  his  individuaUty  as 
an  artist,  will  keep  their  hold  upon  those  who  turn  to  litera- 
ture for  a  gift  of  inward  pleasure  and  an  increase  of  the  joy  of 
living.  They  will  be  appreciated  for  the  lucid  beauty  of  their 
expression,  the  nobiUty  of  their  thought,  the  depth  of  their 
human  sympathy.  But  they  will  be  best  understood  by  those 
who  know  something  of  the  life  and  character  of  the  man  who 
wrote  them,  the  sources  from  which  he  drew  inspiration,  the 
methods  of  work  which  he  followed,  and  the  qualities  which 
distinguish  his  poetry  at  its  best.  To  such  readers  it  will 
appear  that  the  life  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  on  its  poetic 
side  at  least,  has  found  its  most  adequate  and  beautiful 
expression  in  the  voice  of  Tennyson. 


II 

AN    OUTLINE   OF   TENNYSON'S    LIFE 


Brother  of  the  greatest  poets,  true  to  nature,  true  to  art ; 
Lover  of  Immortal  Love,  uplifter  of  the  human  heart ! 
Who  shall  cheer  us  with  high  music,  who  shall  sing  if  thou  depart  ? ' 

In  Lucem  Transitus,  1892. 


10 


II 

AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

Parentage  and  Birth.  —  Alfred  Tennyson  was  bom  on  the 
6th  of  August,  1809,  at  Somersby,  a  Httle  village  in  Lincoln- 
shire. He  was  the  fourth  child  in  a  family  of  twelve,  eight 
boys  and  four  girls,  all  of  whom  but  two  lived  to  pass  the  Hmit 
of  three  score  years  and  ten.  The  stock  was  a  strong  one, 
probably  of  Danish  origin,  but  with  a  mingled  strain  of  Norman 
blood  through  the  old  family  of  d'Eyncourt,  both  branches  of 
which,  according  to  Burke's  Peerage,  are  represented  by  the 
Tennysons. 

The  poet's  father,  the  Rev.  Dr.  George  Clayton  Tennyson, 
was  rector  of  Somersby  and  Wood  Enderby.  His  wife,  Eliza- 
beth Fytche,  was  the  daughter  of  the  vicar  of  Louth,  a  neigh- 
bouring town.  Dr.  Tennyson  was  the  eldest  son  of  a  lawyer 
of  considerable  wealth,  but  was  disinherited,  by  some  caprice 
of  his  father,  in  favour  of  a  younger  brother.  The  rector  of 
Somersby  was  a  man  of  large  frame,  vigourous  mind,  and  vari- 
able temper.  He  had  considerable  learning,  of  a  broad  kind, 
and  his  scholarship,  if  not  profound,  was  practical,  for  he 
taught  his  sons  the  best  of  what  they  knew  before  they 
entered  the  university.  A  great  lover  of  music  and  architec- 
ture, fond  of  writing  verse,  genial  and  brilliant  in  social  inter- 
course, excitable,  warm-hearted,  stern  in  disciphne,  generous 
in  sympathy,  he  was  a  personality  of  overflowing  power ;  but  at 
times  he  was  subject  to  fits  of  profound  depression  and  gloom, 
in  which  the  memory  of  his  father's  unkindness  darkened 
his  mind,  and  he  seemed  almost  to  lose  himself  in  bitter  and 

II 


12  AN    OUTLINE    OF   TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

despondent  moods.  Mrs.  Tennyson  was  a  gentle,  loving,  happy 
character,  by  no  means  lacking  in  strength,  but  excelling  in 
tenderness,  ardent  in  feeHng,  vivid  in  imagination,  fervent  in 
faith.  It  is  said  that  *'  the  wicked  inhabitants  of  a  neighbour- 
ing village  used  to  bring  their  dogs  to  her  windows  and  beat 
them,  in  order  to  be  bribed  to  leave  off  by  the  gentle  lady,  or 
to  make  advantageous  bargains  by  selling  her  the  worthless 
curs."  Her  son  Alfred  drew  her  portrait  lovingly  in  the  poem 
called  "  Isabel "  and  in  the  closing  lines  of  The  Princess :  — 

Not  learned,  save  in  gracious  household  ways, 
Not  perfect,  nay,  but  full  of  tender  wants, 
No  Angel,  but  a  dearer  being,  all  dipt 
In  Angel  instincts,  breathing  Paradise, 
Interpreter  between  the  gods  and  men. 
Who  look'd  all  native  to  her  place,  and  yet 
On  tiptoe  seem'd  to  touch  upon  a  sphere 
Too  gross  to  tread,  and  all  male  minds  perforce 
Sway'd  to  her  from  their  orbits  as  they  moved, 
And  girdled  her  with  music. 

The  poet's  reverent  and  loyal  love  for  his  father  is  expressed 
in  the  lines  "To  J.  S."  Both  parents  saw  in  their  child  the 
promise  of  genius,  and  hoped  great  things  from  him. 

The  Imitative  Impulse.  —  The  boy  grew  up,  if  not  precisely 
in  Milton's  "  quiet  and  still  air  of  delightful  studies,"  yet  in  an 
atmosphere  that  was  full  of  stimulus  for  the  imagination  and 
favourable  to  the  unfolding  of  lively  powers  of  thought  and 
feeling.  It  was  an  obscure  hamlet  of  less  than  a  hundred 
inhabitants  where  the  Tennysons  resided,  but  it  was  a  full  home 
in  which  they  lived,  —  full  of  children,  full  of  books,  full  of 
music,  full  of  fanciful  games  and  pastimes,  full  of  human  inter- 
ests, full  of  life.  The  scenery  about  Somersby  is  friendly 
and  consoling ;  gray  hills  softly  sloping  against  the  sky ; 
wide-branching  elms,  trembling  poplars,  and  drooping  ash- 
trees;   rich  gardens,  close-embowered,  full  of  trailing  roses, 


An  outline  of  tennyson's  life        13 

drowned  lilies,  and  purple-spiked  lavender;  long  ridges  of 
pasture  land  where  the  thick-fleeced  sheep  are  herded ;  clear 
brooks  purling  over  ribbed  sand  and  golden  gravel,  with  many 
a  curve  and  turn;  broad  horizons,  low-hung  clouds,  mellow 
sunlight ;  birds  a  plenty,  flowers  profuse.  All  these  sweet  forms 
Nature  printed  on  the  boy's  mind.  Every  summer  brought  a 
strong  contrast,  when  the  family  went  to  spend  their  hoHday  in 
a  cottage  close  beside  the  sea,  on  the  coast  of  Lincolnshire, 
among  the  tussocked  ridges  of  the  sand-dunes,  looking  out 
upon 

The  hollow  ocean-ridges,  roaring  into  cataracts. 

The  boy  had  an  intense  passion  for  the  sea,  and  learned  to 
know  all  its  moods  and  aspects.  *'  Somehow,"  he  said,  later 
in  life,  "  water  is  the  element  I  love  best  of  all  the  four." 

When  he  was  seven  years  old  he  was  sent  to  the  house  of 
his  grandmother  at  Louth,  to  attend  the  grammar-school.  But 
it  was  a  hard  school  with  a  rough  master,  and  the  boy  hated  it. 
After  three  years  he  came  home  to  continue  his  studies  under 
his  father. 

His  closest  comrade  in  the  home  was  his  brother  Charles, 
a  year  older  than  himself.  (See  In  Memoriam^  Ixxix,  and 
"Prefatory  Poem  to  My  Brother's  Sonnets.")  The  two  lads 
had  many  tastes  in  common,  especially  their  love  of  poetry. 
They  read  widely,  and  offered  the  sincerest  tribute  of  admira- 
tion to  their  favourite  bards.  Alfred's  first  attempt  at  writing 
verse  was  made  when  he  was  eight  years  old.  He  covered 
two  sides  of  a  slate  with  lines  in  praise  of  flowers,  in  imitation 
of  Thomson,  the  only  poet  whom  he  then  knew.  A  little  later 
Pope's  Iliad  fascinated  him,  and  he  produced  many  hundreds 
of  lines  in  the  same  style  and  metre.  At  twelve  he  took 
Scott  for  his  model,  and  turned  out  an  epic  of  six  thousand 
lines.     Then  Byron  became  his  idol.     He  wrote  lyrics  full  of 


14  AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

gloom  and  grief,  a  romantic  drama  in  blank  verse,  and 
imitations  of  the  Hebrew  Melodies. 

Some  of  the  fruitage  of  these  young  labours  may  be  seen  in 
the  volume  entitled  Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  which  was  pub- 
lished anonymously  by  Charles  and  Alfred  Tennyson,  at  Louth, 
in  1827,  and  republished  in  1893,  with  an  effort  to  assign  the 
pieces  to  their  respective  authors,  by  the  poet's  son,  the  present 
Lord  Tennyson.  The  motto  on  the  title-page  of  the  plump, 
modest  little  volume  is  from  Martial :  Hcec  nos  fiovimus  esse 
nihil.  It  is  because  of  this  knowledge  that  the  book  has  value 
as  a  document  in  the  history  of  Tennyson's  development.  It 
shows  a  receptive  mind,  a  quick,  immature  fancy,  and  consid- 
erable fluency  and  variety  in  the  use  of  metre.  It  marks  a 
distinct  stage  of  his  growth,  — -  the  period  when  his  strongest 
poetic  impulse  was  imitative. 

The  Esthetic  Impulse In  1828  Tennyson,  with  his  brother 

Charles,  entered  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  Almost  from  the 
beginning  he  was  a  marked  man  in  the  undergraduate  world. 
His  personal  appearance  was  striking.  Tall,  large-limbed, 
deep-chested  ;  with  a  noble  head  and  abundance  of  dark,  wavy 
hair ;  large,  brown  eyes,  dreamy,  yet  bright ;  swarthy  complex- 
ion ("  almost  like  a  gypsy,"  said  Mrs.  Carlyle) ;  and  a  profile 
like  a  face  on  a  Roman  coin ;  he  gave  the  immediate  impres- 
sion of  rare  gifts  and  power  in  reserve.  "  I  remember  him 
well,"  wrote  Edward  Fitzgerald,  "  a  sort  of  Hyperion."  His 
natural  shyness  and  habits  of  solitude  kept  him  from  making 
many  acquaintances,  but  his  friends  were  among  the  best  and 
most  brilliant  men  in  the  University:  Richard  Monckton  Milnes, 
Richard  Chenevix  Trench,  W.  H.  Brookfield,  John  Mitchell 
Kemble,  James  Spedding,  Henry  Alford,  Charles  Buller,  Charles 
Merivale,  W.  H.  Thompson,  and  most  intimate  of  all,  Arthur 
Henry  Hallam.  This  was  an  extraordinary  circle  of  youths ; 
distinguished    for    scholarship,   wit,    eloquence,    freedom    of 


AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE  15 

thought ;  promising  great  things,  which  most  of  them  achieved. 
Among  these  men  Tennyson's  strength  of  mind  and  character 
was  recognized,  but  most  of  all  they  were  proud  of  him  as 
a  coming  poet.  In  their  college  rooms,  with  an  applauding 
audience  around  him,  he  would  chant  in  his  deep,  sonorous 
voice  such  early  poems  as  "The  Hesperides,"  "Oriana," 
"The  Lover's  Tale." 

He  did  not  neglect  his  studies,  the  classics,  history,  and  the 
natural  sciences ;  but  his  general  reading  meant  more  to  him. 
He  was  a  member  of  an  inner  circle  called  the  "Apostles,"  a 
society  devoted  to  '  religion  and  radicalism.'  (See  In  Memo- 
riam^  Ixxxvii.)  The  new  spirit,  represented  in  literature 
by  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  took  possession  of 
him.  He  went  back  to  the  Elizabethan  age,  to  Milton's  early 
poems,  as  the  fountain-heads  of  English  lyrical  poetry.  Not 
now  as  an  imitator,  but  as  a  kindred  artist,  he  gave  himself 
to  the  search  for  beauty,  freedom,  delicate  truth  to  nature, 
romantic  charm. 

His  poem  of  "Timbuctoo,"  which  won  the  Chancellor's 
gold  medal  in  1829,  was  only  a  working-over  of  an  earlier 
poem  on  "The  Battle  of  Armageddon,"  and  he  thought  little 
of  it.  But  in  1830  he  published  a  slender  volume  entitled 
PoemSj  Chiefly  Lyrical,  which  shows  the  quality  of  his  work  in 
this  period  when  the  aesthetic  impulse  was  dominant  in  him. 
They  are  marked  by  freshness  of  fancy,  melody  of  metre,  vivid 
descriptive  touches,  and  above  all  by  what  Arthur  Hallam,  in 
his  thoughtful  review  of  the  volume,  called  "  a  strange  earnest- 
ness in  his  worship  of  beauty." 

In  the  summer  of  1830,  Hallam  and  Tennyson  made  a 
journey  together  to  the  Pyrenees,  to  carry  some  funds  which 
had  been  raised  in  England  to  the  Spanish  insurgents  who 
were  fighting  for  liberty.  Tennyson  was  not  in  sympathy  with 
the  conservatism  which  then,  as  in  Wordsworth's  day,  made 


l6  AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

Cambridge  seem  narrow  and  dry  and  heartless  to  men  of  free 
and  ardent  spirit.  In  1831  the  illness  and  death  of  his  father 
made  it  necessary  for  him  to  leave  college  and  go  home  to 
live  with  the  family  at  Somersby,  where  he  remained  for  six 
years.  In  1832  he  published  his  second  volume  of  Poems ^ 
dated  1833. 

The  tone  and  quality  of  this  volume  are  the  same  that  we 
find  in  its  predecessor,  but  the  manner  is  firmer,  stronger,  more 
assured.  There  is  also  a  warmer  human  interest  in  such  poems 
as  "  The  Miller's  Daughter  "  and  "  The  May  Queen  "  ;  and  in 
"The  Palace  of  Art"  there  is  a  distinct  intimation  that  the 
purely  aesthetic  period  of  his  poetic  development  is  nearly  at 
an  end. 

The  criticism  which  these  two  volumes  received,  outside 
of  the  small  circle  of  Tennyson's  friends  and  admirers,  was 
severe  and  scornful.  Blackwood'' s  Magazine  called  the  poet 
the  pet  of  a  Cockney  coterie,  and  said  that  some  of  his  lyrics 
were  "  dismal  drivel."  The  Quarterly  Review  sneered  at  him 
as  "  another  and  a  brighter  star  of  that  galaxy  or  milky  way 
of  poetry,  of  which  the  lamented  Keats  was  the  harbinger." 
Tennyson  felt  this  contemptuous  treatment  deeply.  It  seemed 
to  him  that  the  English  people  would  never  like  his  work. 
His  aesthetic  period  closed  in  gloom  and  discouragement. 

The  Religious  and  Personal  Impulse.  —  But  far  heavier  than 
any  literary  disappointment  was  the  blow  that  fell  in  1833 
when  his  dearest  friend,  Arthur  Hallam,  to  whom  his  sister 
Emilia  was  promised  in  marriage,  died  suddenly  in  Vienna. 
This  great  loss,  coming  to  Tennyson  at  a  time  when  the  first 
joy  of  youth  was  already  overcast  by  clouds  of  loneliness  and 
despondency,  was  the  wind  of  destiny  that  drove  him  from  the 
pleasant  harbour  of  dreams  out  upon  the  wide,  strange,  uncharted 
sea  of  spiritual  strife  and  sorrow,  —  the  sea  which  seems  so  bitter 
and  so  wild,  but  on  whose  farther  shore  those  who  bravely  make 


AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE  17 

the  voyage  find  freedom  and  security  and  peace  and  the  gen- 
erous joy  of  a  larger,  nobler  Hfe.  The  problems  of  doubt  and 
faith  which  had  been  worked  out  with  abstract  arguments  and 
fine  theories  in  the  Apostles'  Society  at  Cambridge,  now  became 
personal  problems  for  Tennyson.  He  must  face  them  and  find 
some  answer,  if  his  life  was  to  have  a  deep  and  enduring  har- 
mony in  it,  —  a  harmony  in  which  the  discords  of  fear  and 
self-will  and  despair  would  dissolve.  The  true  answer,  he  felt 
sure,  could  never  be  found  in  selfish  isolation.  The  very  inten- 
sity of  his  grief  purified  it  as  by  fire,  made  it  more  humane, 
more  sympathetic.  His  conflict  with  "the  spectres  of  the 
mind"  was  not  for  himself  alone,  but  for  others  who  must 
wrestle  as  he  did,  with  sorrow  and  doubt  and  death.  The 
deep  significance,  the  poignant  verity,  the  visionary  mystery 
of  human  existence  in  all  its  varied  forms,  pressed  upon  him. 
Like  the  Lady  of  Shalott  in  his  own  ballad,  he  turned  from  the 
lucid  mirror  of  fantasy,  the  magic  web  of  art,  to  the  real  world 
of  living  joy  and  grief.  But  it  was  not  a  curse,  like  that  which 
followed  her  departure  from  her  cloistered  tower,  that  came 
upon  the  poet,  drawn  and  driven  from  the  tranquil,  shadowy 
region  of  exquisite  melodies  and  beautiful  pictures.  It  was 
a  blessing,  —  the  blessing  of  clearer,  stronger  thought,  deeper, 
broader  feeling,  more  power  to  understand  the  world  and  more 
energy  to  move  it. 

Tennyson's  personal  sorrow  for  the  loss  of  Hallam  is 
expressed  in  the  two  lyrics  "  Break,  break,  break "  and  "  In 
the  Valley  of  Cauteretz,"  poems  which  should  always  be 
read  together  as  the  cry  of  grief  and  the  answer  of  consola- 
tion. His  long  spiritual  struggle  with  the  questions  of  despair 
and  hope,  of  duty  and  destiny,  which  were  brought  home  to 
him  by  the  loss  of  his  friend,  is  recorded  in  In  Memoriam. 
The  poem  was  begun  at  Somersby  in  1833  and  continued  at 
different  places  and  times,  as  the  interwoven  lyrics  show,  for 


l8  AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

nearly  sixteen  years.  Though  the  greater  part  of  it  was 
written  by  1842,  it  was  not  published  until  1850.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone thought  it  "  the  richest  oblation  ever  offered  by  the 
affection  of  friendship  at  the  tomb  of  the  departed."  It  is 
that  and  something  more :  it  is  the  great  English  classic 
on  the  love  of  immortaHty  and  the  immortality  of  love. 
Tennyson  said,  "It  was  meant  to  be  a  kind  of  Divina  Corn- 
media,  ending  with  happiness."     The  central  thought  of  the 

poem  is 

'T  is  better  to  have  loved  and  lost 
Than  never  to  have  loved  at  all. 

Wherein  it  is  better  now,  and  why  the  poet  trusts  it  will  be 
better  still  in  thfe  long  future,  —  this  is  the  vital  question  which 
the  poem  answers  in  music.  ^ 

But  apart  from  these  lyrics  of  personal  grief,  and  this  rich, 
monumental  elegy,  there  are  other  poems  of  Tennyson,  written 
between  1833  and  1842,  which  show  the  extraordinary  deep- 
ening and  strengthening  of  his  mind  during  this  period  of 
inward  crisis.  For  ten  years  he  published  no  book.  Living 
with  his  mother  and  sisters  at  Somersby,  at  High  Beech  in 
Epping  Forest,  at  Tunbridge  Wells,  at  Boxley  near  Maidstone  ; 
caring  for  the  family,  as  the  eldest  son  at  home,  and  skilfully 
managing  the  narrow  means  on  which  they  had  to  live ;  wan- 
dering through  the  country  on  long  walking  tours;  visiting 
his  friends  in  London  now  and  then;  falling  in  love  finally 
and  forever  with  Miss  Emily  Sellwood,  to  whom  he  became 
engaged  in  1836,  but  whom  he  could  not  marry  yet  for  want 
of  money ;  he  held  fast  to  his  vocation,  and  though  he  some- 
times doubted  whether  the  world  would  give  him  a  hearing,  he 
never  wavered  in  his  conviction  that  his  mission  in  life  was 
to  be  a  poet.  The  years  of  silence  were  not  years  of  vacancy. 
Here  is  a  memorandum  of  a  week's  work  :  ^^  Monday,  History, 
German.     Tuesday,  Chemistry,  German.     Wednesday,  Botany, 


AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE  19 

German.  Thursday^  Electricity,  German.  Friday,  Animal 
Physiology,  German.  Saturday ,  Mechanics.  Sunday ,  Theol- 
ogy. Next  week,  Italian  in  the  afternoon.  7'hird  week,  Greek. 
Evenings,  Poetry."  Hundreds  of  lines  were  composed  and 
never  written ;  hundreds  more  were  written  and  burned.  So 
far  from  being  "an  artist  long  before  he  was  a  poet,"  as  Mr. 
R.  H.  Hutton  somewhat  vacuously  says  in  his  essay  on  Tenny- 
son, he  toiled  terribly  to  make  himself  an  artist,  because  he 
knew  he  was  a  poet.  The  results  of  this  toil,  in  the  revision 
of  those  of  his  early  poems  which  he  thought  worthy  to  survive, 
and  in  the  new  poems  which  he  was  ready  to  publish,  were 
given  to  the  world  in  the  two  volumes  of  1842. 

The  changes  in  the  early  poems  were  all  in  the  direction 
of  clearness,  simplicity,  a  stronger  human  interest.  The  new 
poems  included  "The  Vision  of  Sin,"  "The  Two  Voices," 
"Ulysses,"  "  Morte  d'Arthur,"  the  conclusion  of  "The  May 
Queen,"  "Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere,"  "Dora,"  "The  Gar- 
dener's Daughter,"  "  Locksley  Hall,"  "  St.  Agnes'  Eve,"  "Sir 
Galahad."  With  the  appearance  of  these  two  volumes,  Tenny- 
son began  to  be  a  popular  poet.  But  he  did  not  lose  his  hold 
upon  the  elect,  the  '  fit  audience,  though  few.'  The  Quarterly 
Revie^v,  The  Westminster  Review,  Dickens,  Landor,  Rogers, 
Carlyle,  Edward  Fitzgerald,  Aubrey  de  Vere,  and  such  men  in 
England,  Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Lowell,  and  Poe  in  America, 
recognized  the  charm  and  the  power  of  his  verse.  In  1845 
Wordsworth  wrote  to  Henry  Reed  of  Philadelphia,  "  Tennyson 
is  decidedly  the  first  of  our  living  poets,  and  I  hope  will  Hve 
to  give  the  world  still  better  things." 

Such  was  the  liberating  and  ennobling  effect  of  the  deeper 
personal  and  spiritual  impulse  which  came  into  his  poetry  with 
the  experience  of  sorrow  and  inward  conflict. 

The  Social  Impulse.  —  From  1842  onward  we  find  the  poet, 
now  better  known  to  the  world,  coming  into  wider  and  closer 


20  AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

contact  with  the  general  life  of  men.  Not  that  he  ever  lost 
the  unconventional  freedom  of  his  dress  and  manner,  the  inde- 
pendence of  his  thought  and  taste,  the  singular  frankness, 
almost  brusquerie  of  his  talk,  which  was  like  thinking  aloud. 
He  never  became  what  is  called,  oddly  enough,  a  "society 
man."  He  was  incapable  of  roaring  gently  at  afternoon  teas 
or  literary  menageries.  He  was  unwilling  to  join  himself  to 
any  party  in  politics,  as  Dryden  and  Swift  and  Addison,  or 
even  as  Southey  and  Wordsworth,  had  done.  But  he  had 
a  sincere  love  for  genuine  human  intercourse,  in  which  real 
thoughts  and  feelings  are  uttered  by  real  people  who  have 
something  to  say  to  one  another ;  a  vivid  sense  of  the  humour- 
ous aspects  of  Hfe  (shown  in  such  poems  as  the  two  versions  of 
the  "Northern  Farmer,"  "The  Spinster's  Sweet-Arts,"  "The 
Church- Warden  ")  ;  and  a  broad  interest  in  the  vital  questions 
and  the  popular  movements  of  his  time.  If  I  am  not  mistaken, 
this  period  when  his  poetry  began  to  make  a  wider  appeal  to 
the  people  is  marked  by  the  presence  of  a  new  impulse  in  his 
work.  We  may  call  it,  for  the  sake  of  a  name,  the  social 
impulse,  meaning  thereby  that  the  poet  now  looks  more  often  at 
his  work  in  its  relation  to  the  general  current  of  human  affairs 
and  turns  to  themes  which  have  a  place  in  public  attention. 

There  was  also  at  this  time  an  attempt  on  Tennyson's  part 
to  engage  in  business,  which  turned  out  to  be  a  disastrous 
mistake.  He  was  induced  to  go  into  an  enterprise  for  the 
carving  of  wood  by  machinery.  Into  this  he  put  all  of  his 
capital ;  and  some  of  the  small  patrimony  of  his  brothers  and 
sisters  was  embarked  in  the  same  doubtful  craft.  In  1843 
the  ship  went  down  with  all  its  lading,  and  the  Tennysons 
found  themselves  on  the  coast  of  actual  poverty.  To  add  to 
this  misfortune,  the  poet's  health  gave  way  completely,  and  he 
was  forced  to  spend  a  long  time  in  a  water-cure  establishment, 
under  treatment  for  hypochondria. 


AN    OUTLINE    OF   TENNYSON'S    LIFE  21 

In  1846  the  grant  of  a  pension  of  ;£^2oo  from  the  Civil  List, 
on  the  recommendation  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  cordially  approved 
by  the  Queen,  relieved  the  pressure  of  pecuniary  need  under 
which  Tennyson  had  been  left  by  the  failure  of  his  venture  in 
wood.  In  1847  ^^  published,  perhaps  in  answer  to  the  demand 
for  a  longer  and  more  sustained  poem,  TAe  Princess  ;  A  Medley, 
It  is  an  epic,  complete  enough  in  structure,  but  in  substance 
half  serious  and  half  burlesque.  It  tells  the  story  of  a  king's 
daughter  who  was  fired  with  the  ambition  to  emancipate  (and 
even  to  separate)  her  sex  from  man,  by  founding  a  woman's 
college  extraordinary.  This  design  is  crossed  by  the  efforts  of 
an  amourous,  chivalrous,  faintly  ridiculous  prince,  who  courts 
her  under  difficulties  and  wins  her  through  the  pity  that  over- 
comes her  when  she  sees  him  wounded  almost  to  death  by  her 
brother.  The  central  theme  of  the  poem  is  the  question  of  the 
higher  education  of  women,  but  the  style  moves  so  obliquely 
in  its  mock  heroics  that  it  is  hard  to  tell  whether  the  argument 
is  for  or  against.  The  diction  is  marked  by  Tennyson's  two 
most  frequent  faults,  over-decoration,  and  indirectness  of  utter- 
ance. It  is  much  admired  by  girls  at  boarding-school,  but  the 
woman's  college  of  the  present  day  does  not  regard  its  academic 
programme  with  favour.  The  poem  rises  at  the  close  to  a  very 
sincere  and  splendid  eloquence  in  praise  of  true  womanhood. 
The  intercalary  songs,  which  were  added  in  1850,  include  two 
or  three  of  Tennyson's  best  lyrics.  They  shine  like  jewels  in 
a  setting  which  is  not  all  of  pure  gold. 

In  1850  there  were  three  important  events  in  the  poet's  life  : 
his  marriage  with  Miss  Emily  Sellwood  ;  the  publication  of  the 
long-laboured  In  Memoriam  ;  and  his  appointment  as  Poet- 
Laureate,  to  succeed  Wordsworth,  who  had  just  died.  The 
three  events  were  closely  connected.  It  was  the  ;^300 
received  in  advance  for  In  Memoriam  that  provided  a  financial 
basis  for  the  marriage ;  and  it  was  the  profound  admiration  of 


22  AN*  OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

the  Prince  Consort  for  this  poem  that  determined  the  choice 
of  Tennyson  for  the  Laureateship. 

The  marriage  was  in  every  sense  happy.  The  poet's  wife 
was  not  only  of  a  nature  most  tender  and  beautiful ;  she  was 
also  a  wise  counsellor,  a  steadfast  comrade,  as  he  wrote  of 
her,  — 

"With  a  faith  as  clear  as  the  heights  of  the  June-blue  heaven, 

And  a  fancy  as  summer-new 

As  the  green  of  the  bracken  amid  the  glow  of  the  heather. 

Their  first  home  was  made  at  Twickenham,  and  here  their 
oldest  and  only  surviving  son,  Hallam,  was  born.  In  1852  the 
"  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  "  was  published. 
It  was  received  with  some  disappointment  and  unfavourable 
criticism  as  the  first  production  of  the  Laureate  upon  an 
important  public  event.  But  later  and  wiser  critics  generally 
incline  to  the  opinion  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  who  thought 
that  the  ode ,  had  "  never  been  surpassed  in  any  tongue  or 
time."  1 

In  1853,  increasing  returns  from  his  books  (about  ^500  a 
year)  made  it  possible  for  Tennyson  to  lease,  and  ultimately 
to  buy,  the  house  and  small  estate  of  Farringford,  near  the  vil- 
lage of  Freshwater  on  the  Isle  of  Wight.  It  is  a  low,  rambling, 
unpretentious,  gray  house,  tree-embowered,  ivy-mantled,  in  a 

careless-ordered  garden, 
Close  to  the  ridge  of  a  noble  down. 

His  other  home,  Aldworth,  near  the  summit  of  Black  Down  in 
Sussex,  was  not  built  until  1868.  A  stateUer  mansion,  though 
less  picturesque,  its  attraction  as  a  summer  home  Hes  in  the 
beauty  of  its  terraced  rose-garden,  the  far-reaching  view  which 
it  commands  to  the  south,  and  the  refreshing  purity  of  the 
upland  air  that  breathes  around  it. 

1  Letters  of  R.  L.  Stevenson,  Vol.  I,  p.  220. 


AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE  23 

In  1854  the  famous  poem  on  "The  Charge  of  the  Light 
Brigade "  was  published  in  The  London  Examiner.  It  was 
included,  with  the  Wellington  Ode,  in  the  volume  entitled 
Maud^  and  Other  Poems,  which  appeared  in  the  following  year. 
Maud  grew  out  of  the  dramatic  lyric  beginning  "  O  that 't  were 
possible,"  in  The  Tribute,  1837.  Sir  John  Simeon  said  to 
Tennyson  that  something  more  was  needed  to  explain  the 
story  of  the  lyric.  He  then  unfolded  the  central  idea  in  a 
succession  of  lyrics  in  which  the  imaginary  hero  reveals  him- 
self and  the  tragedy  of  his  life.  The  sub-title  A  Monodrama 
was  added  in  1875.  When  Tennyson  read  the  poem  to  me  in 
1892,  he  said  "It  is  dramatic,  —  the  story  of  a  man  who  has 
a  touch  of  inherited  insanity,  morbid  and  selfish.  The  poem 
shows  what  love  has  done  for  him.  The  war  is  only  an  episode." 
This  is  undoubtedly  true  and  just.  Yet  the  vigour  of  the  long 
invective  against  the  corruptions  of  a  selfish  peace,  with  which 
the  poem  opens,  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  patriotic  welcome 
to  the  Crimean  war,  with  which  it  closes,  show  something  of 
the  way  in  which  the  poet's  mind  was  working.  This  volume 
together  with  The  Princess  may  be  taken  as  an  illustration  of 
the  force  of  the  social  impulse  which  has  now  entered  into 
Tennyson's  poetry  to  cooperate  with  the  aesthetic  impulse  and 
the  religious  impulse  in  the  full  labours  of  his  maturity. 

Maturity. — Tennyson  was  now  forty-five  years  old.  But 
there  still  lay  before  him  nearly  forty  years  in  which  he  was  to 
bring  forth  poetry  in  abundance,  a  rich,  varied,  unfaihng  har- 
vest. It  is  true  that  before  this  wonderful  period  of  maturity 
ended  there  were  signs  of  age  visible  in  some  of  his  work,  — 
a  slackening  of  vigour,  an  uncertainty  of  touch,  a  tendency 
to  overload  his  verse  with  teaching,  a  failure  to  remove  the 
traces  of  labour  from  his  art,  a  lack  of  courage  and  sureness  in 
self-criticism.  But  it  was  long  before  these  marks  of  decline 
were  visible,  and  even  then,  more  than  any  other  English  poet 


24  AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

at  an  equal  age,  he  kept,  and  in  the  hours  of  happy  inspira- 
tion he  revealed,  the  quick  emotion,  the  vivid  sensibility,  the 
splendid  courage  of  a  heart  that  does  not  grow  gray  with 
years. 

In  1859  the  first  instalment  of  his  most  important  epic, 
Idylls  of  the  King^  appeared.  It  was  followed  in  1869,  in 
1872,  in  1885,  by  the  other  parts  of  the  complete  poem.  In 
1864  Enoch  Arden  was  published.  In  1875  Queen  Mary, 
the  first  of  the  dramas,  came  out,  followed  by  Harold  in  1876, 
and  The  Cup  and  The  Falcon  and  Becketm  1884.  In  1880 
Ballads,  and  Other  Poems  contained  some  of  his  best  work, 
such  as  "  Rizpah,"  "  The  Revenge,"  "  In  the  Children's  Hos- 
pital." In  1885  Tiresias,  and  Other  Poems;  in  1886  Locks  ley 
Hall  Sixty  Years  After;  in  1889  Demeter,  and  Other  Poems, 
including  "Romney's  Remorse,"  "Vastness,"  "The  Progress 
of  Spring,"  "Merlin  and  The  Gleam,"  "The  Oak,"  "The 
Throstle,"  and  that  supreme  lyric  which  Tennyson  wished  to 
have  printed  last  in  every  edition  of  his  collected  works, — 
"Crossing  the  Bar."  In  1892  the  long  list  closes  with  The 
Death  of  CEnone,  Akbar's  Dream,  and  Other  Poems. 

The  life  of  the  man  who  was  producing,  after  middle  age, 
this  great  body  of  poetry,  was  full,  rich,  and  happy.  The  one 
sorrow  that  crossed  it  was  the  death  of  his  younger  son,  Lionel, 
in  India,  in  1886.  Secluded,  as  ever,  from  the  busyness  of  the 
world,  but  in  no  sense  separated  from  its  deeper  interests,  Ten- 
nyson studied  and  wrought,  delighting  in  intercourse  with  his 

friends  and  in 

converse  with  all  forms 
Of  the  many-sided  mind, 
And  those  whom  passion  hath  not  blinded, 
Subtle-thoughted,  myriad-minded. 

In  1883  he  accepted  from  the  Queen  the  honour  of  a  peerage 
(a  baronetcy  had  been  offered  before  and  refiised),  and  was 


AN    OUTLINE    OF   TENNYSON'S    LIFE  25 

gazetted  in  the  following  year  as  Baron  of  Aldworth  and  Far- 
ringford.  For  himself,  he  frankly  said,  the  dignity  was  one 
that  he  did  not  desire ,  but  he  felt  that  he  could  not  let  his 
reluctance  stand  in  the  way  of  a  tribute  from  the  Throne  to 
Literature.  When  he  entered  the  House  of  Lords  he  took  his 
seat  on  the  cross-benches,  showing  that  he  did  not  wish  to 
bind  himself  to  any  party.  His  first  vote  was  cast  for  the 
Extension  of  the  Franchise. 

At  the  close  of  August  1892,  when  I  saw  him  at  Aldworth, 
he  was  already  beginning  to  feel  the  warning  touches  of  pain 
which  preceded  his  last  illness.  But  he  was  still  strong  and 
mighty  in  spirit,  a  noble  shape  of  manhood,  massive,  large- 
browed,  his  bronzed  face  like  the  countenance  of  an  antique 
seer,  his  scattered  locks  scarcely  touched  with  gray.  He  was 
working  on  the  final  proofs  of  his  last  volume  and  planning 
new  poems.  At  table  his  talk  was  free,  friendly,  full  of  humour 
and  common-sense.  In  the  library  he  read  from  his  poems 
the  things  which  illustrated  the  subjects  of  which  he  had  been 
speaking,  —  passages  from  Idylls  of  the  King,  some  of  the 
songs,  the  **  Northern  Farmer  (New  Style)  "  and,  more  fully, 
Maud  and  the  Wellington  Ode.  His  voice  was  deep,  rolling, 
resonant.  It  sank  to  a  note  of  tenderness,  touched  with  pro- 
phetic solemnity,  as  he  read  the  last  lines  of  the  ode  :  — 

Speak  no  more  of  his  renown, 
Lay  your  earthly  fancies  down, 
And  in  the  vast  cathedral  leave  him, 
God  accept  him,  Christ  receive  him. 

On  the  6th  of  October,  1892,  between  one  and  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  with  the  splendour  of  the  full  moon  pouring  in 
through  the  windows  of  the  room  where  his  family  were  watch- 
ing by  his  bed,  he  passed  into  the  world  of  light.  His  body 
was  laid  to  rest  on  the  12  th  of  October,  in  Westminster  Abbey, 


26  AN    OUTLINE    OF    TENNYSON'S    LIFE 

next  to  the  grave  of  Robert  Browning,  and  close  beside  the 
monument  of  Chaucer.  The  mighty  multitude  of  mourners 
who  assembled  at  the  funeral,  —  scholars,  statesmen,  nobles, 
private  soldiers,  veterans  of  the  Balaclava  Light  Brigade,  poor 
boys  of  the  "Gordon  Home,"  — told  how  widely  and  deeply 
Tennyson  had  moved  the  hearts  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men  by  his  poetry,  —  which  was,  in  effect,  his  life. 


Ill 

TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 


27 


Ein  Quidam  sagt,  **^Ich  bin  von  keiner  Schule  ! 

Kein  Meister  lebt  mit  dem  ich  buhle  ; 

Auch  bin  ich  weit  davon  entfernt. 

Das  ich  von  Todten  was  gelernt?^ 

Das  heisst,  wenn  ich  ihn  recht  ver stand ; 

"Ich  bin  ein  Narr  auf  eigne  Hand."  Goethe. 


28 


Ill 

TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

Emerson  was  of  the  same  opinion  as  Goethe  in  regard  to 
originality.  Writing  of  Shakespeare  he  says,  "The  greatest 
genius  is  the  most  indebted  man,"  and  defends  the  poet's 
right  to  take  his  material  wherever  he  can  find  it.  Shakespeare 
certainly  exercised  large  liberty  in  that  respect  and  did  not 
even  trouble  himself  to  look  for  a  defence.  Wordsw6rth  wrote, 
^^Multa  tulit  fecitque  must  be  the  motto  of  all  those  who  are 
to  last."  Most  of  the  men  whom  the  world  calls  great  in 
poetry  have  drawn  freely  from  the  sources  which  are  open  to 
all,  not  only  in  nature,  but  also  in  the  literature  of  the  past, 
and  in  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  men  around  them,  —  the 
inchoate  literature  of  the  present. 

From  all  these  sources  Tennyson  took  what  he  could  make 
his  own,  and  used  it  to  enrich  his  verse.  The  gold  thus 
gathered  was  not  all  new-mined;  some  of  it  had  passed 
through  other  hands ;  but  it  was  all  new-minted,  —  fused  in 
his  imagination  and  fashioned  into  forms  bearing  the  mark  of 
his  own  genius.  My  object  in  the  present  writing  is  to  give 
some  idea  of  the  way  in  which  he  collected  his  material  and 
the  method  by  which  he  wrought  it  into  poetry. 

(i .)  With  nature  Tennyson  dealt  at  first  hand.  A  sensitive, 
patient,  joyful  observer,  he  watched  the  clouds,  the  waters, 
the  trees,  the  flowers,  the  birds,  for  new  disclosures  of  their 
beauty,  new  suggestions  of  their  symbolic  relation  to  the  life 
of  man.  In  a  letter  written  to  Mr.  Dawson  of  Montreal, 
commenting  upon  the  statement  that  certain  lines  of  natural 

29 


30  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

description  in  his  work  were  suggested  by  something  in  Words- 
worth or  Shelley,  he  demurs,  with  perceptible  warmth,  and 
goes  on  to  say  :  "  There  was  a  period  in  my  life  when,  as  an 
artist.  Turner  for  instance,  takes  rough  sketches  of  landskip, 
etc.,  in  order  to  work  them  eventually  into  some  great  picture, 
so  I  was  in  the  habit  of  chronicling,  in  four  or  five  words  or 
more,  whatever  might  strike  me  as  picturesque  in  nature.  I 
never  put  these  down,  and  many  and  many  a  line  has  gone 
away  on  the  north  wind,  but  some  remain."  Then  he  gives 
some  illustrations,  among  them, 

A  full  sea  glazed  with  muffled  moonlight, 

which  was  suggested  by  a  night  at  Torquay,  when  the  sky  was 
covered  with  thin  vapour.  The  line  was  afterwards  embodied 
in  The  Princess,  i>  244. 

But  in  saying  that  he  never  wrote  these  observations  down, 
the  poet  misremembers  his  own  custom ;  ibr  his  note-books 
contain  many  luminous  fragments  of  recorded  vision,  like  the 
following :  — 

{Babbicombe.)     Like  serpent-coils  upon  the  deep. 

{Bonchurch^     A  little  salt  pool  fluttering  round  a  stone  upon  the 

shore.     ("  Guinevere,"  1.  50.) 
{The  river  Shannon^  on  the  rapids^     Ledges  of  battling  water. 
{Cornwall^     Sea  purple  and  green  like  a  peacock's  neck.     (See 

"  The  Daisy.") 
{Voyage  to  Norway.)     One  great  wave,  green-shining  past  with 

all  its  crests  smoking  high  up  beside  the  vessel. 

This  last  passage  is  transformed,  in  "  Lancelot  and  Elaine," 
into  a  splendid  simile  :  — 

They  couch'd  their  spears  and  prick'd  their  steeds,  and  thus, 
Their  plumes  driv'n  backward  by  the  wind  they  made 
In  moving,  all  together  down  upon  him 
Bare,  as  a  wild  wave  in  the  wide  North-sea, 
Green-glimmering  toward  the  summit,  bears,  with  all 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  31 

Its  stormy  crests  that  smoke  against  the  skies, 
Down  on  a  bark,  and  overbears  the  bark, 
And  him  that  helms  it,  so  they  overbore 
Sir  Lancelot  and  his  charger. 

Tennyson  was  always  fond  of  travel,  and  from  all  his  jour- 
neys he  brought  back  jewels  which  we  find  embedded  here 
and  there  in  his  verse.  The  echoes  in  "The  Bugle  Song" 
were  heard  on  the  Lakes  of  Killarney  in  1842.  The  Silver 
Horns  of  the  Alps  and  the  "wreaths  of  dangling  water- 
smoke,"  in  the  "small  sweet  idyl"  from  The  Princess yVfQio. 
seen  at  Lauterbrunnen  in  1846.     In  "QEnone,"  — 

My  tall  dark  pines  that  plumed  the  craggy  ledge 
High  over  the  blue  gorge,  and  all  between 
The  snowy  peak  and  snow-white  cataract, 

were  sketched  in  the  Pyrenees  in  1830.  In  the  first  edition 
of  the  poem  he  brought  in  a  beautiful  species  of  cicala,  with 
scarlet  wings,  which  he  saw  on  his  Spanish  journey ;  though 
he  was  conscientious  enough  to  add  a  footnote  explaining  that 
"  probably  nothing  of  the  kind  exists  in  Mount  Ida." 

It  is  true  that  in  later  editions  he  let  the  cicala  and  the 
note  go ;  but  this  example  will  serve  to  illustrate  the  defect, 
or  at  least  the  danger,  which  attends  Tennyson's  method  of 
working  up  his  pictures.  There  is  a  temptation  to  introduce 
too  many  details  from  the  remembered  or  recorded  "  rough 
sketches,"  to  crowd  the  canvas,  to  use  bits  of  description 
which,  however  beautiful  in  themselves,  do  not  always  add  to 
the  strength  of  the  picture,  and  sometimes  even  give  it  an  air 
of  distracting  splendour.  Ornateness  is  a  fault  from  which 
Tennyson  is  not  free.  In  spite  of  his  careful  revision  there 
are  still  some  red-winged  cicalas  left  in  his  verse.  There  are 
passages  in  The  Princess^  in  "  Enoch  Arden,"  and  in  some  of 
the  Idylls  of  the  King,  for  example,  which  are  bewildering  in 
their  opulence. 


32  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

But  on  the  other  hand  it  must  be  said  that  very  often  this 
richness  of  detail  is  precisely  the  effect  which  he  wishes  to 
produce,  and  in  certain  poems,  like  "  Recollections  of  the 
Arabian  Nights,"  "The  Lotos-Eaters,"  and  "The  Palace  of 
Art,"  it  enhancesthejny^ka^  atmosphereja  whirh^ 

the  subject  is  conceived.^  If  he  sometimes  puts  in  too  many 
touches,  he  seldom,  if  ever,  makes  use  of  any  that  is  not  in 
harmony  with  the  fundamental  tone,  the  colour-key  of  his 
picture.  Notice  the  accumulation  of  dark  images  of  loneliness 
and  desertion  in  "  Mariana,"  the  cold,  gray  sadness  and  weari- 
ness of  the  landscape  in  "The  Dying  Swan,"  and  the  serene 
rapture  that  clothes  the  earth  with  emerald  and  the  sea  with 
sapphire  in  the  song  of  triumphant  love  in  Maud,  I,  xviii. 

There  are  passages  in  Tennyson's  verse  where  his  direct 
vision  of  nature  is  illumined  by  his  memory  of  the  things  that 
other  poets  have  written  when  looking  at  the  same  scene. 
Thus  "  Frater  Ave  atque  Vale  "  is  filled,  as  it  should  be,  with 
touches  from  Catullus.  But  how  delicate  is  the  art  with  which 
they  are  blended  and  harmonized,  how  exquisite  the  shimmer 
of  the  argent-leaved  orchards  which  Tennyson  adds  in  the 
last  line, 

Sweet  CatuUus's  all-but-island,  olive-silvery  Sirmio  I 

In  "The  Daisy"  (a  series  of  pictures  from  an  Italian  jour- 
ney made  with  his  wife  in  185 1,  recalled  to  the  poet's  memory 
by  finding,  between  the  leaves  of  a  book  which  he  was  reading 
in  Edinburgh,  a  daisy  plucked  on  the  Spliigen  Pass),  we  find 
literary  and  historical  reminiscences  interwoven  with  descrip- 
tions. At  Cogoletto  he  remembers  the  young  Columbus  who 
was  born  there.  On  Lake  Como,  which  Virgil  praised  in  the 
Georgics,  he  recalls 

The  rich  Virgilian  rustic  measure 
Of  Lari  Maxume,  all  the  way. 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  33 

At  Varenna  the  story  of  Queen  Theodolind  comes  back  to 
him.  There  are  critics  who  profess  to  regard  such  allusions, 
and  reminiscences  as  indicating  a  lack  of  originality  in  a  poet. 
But  why?  Tennyson  saw  Italy  not  with  the  eyes  of  a  peas- 
ant, but  with  the  enlarged  and  sensitive  vision  of  a  scholar. 
The  associations  of  the  past  entered  into  his  perception  of  the 
spirit  of  place.     New  colours  glowed  on 

tower,  or  high  hill-convent,  seen 
A  light  amid  its  olives  green ; 

Or  olive-hoary  cape  in  ocean ; 
Or  rosy  blossom  in  hot  ravine, 

because  he  remembered  the  great  things  that  had  been  done 
and  suffered  in  the  land  through  which  he  was  passing.  Is 
not  the  landscape  of  imagination  as  real  as  the  landscape 
of  optics  ?  Must  a  man  be  ignorant  in  order  to  be  original  ? 
Is  true  poetry  possible  only  to  him  who  looks  at  nature  with  a 
mind  as  bare  as  if  he  had  never  opened  a  book?  Milton  did 
not  think  so. 

Tennyson's  use  of  nature  as  the  great  source  of  poetic 
images  and  figures  was  for  the  most  part  immediate  and 
direct ;  but  often  his  vision  was  quickened  and  broadened  by 
memories  of  what  the  great  poets  had  seen  and  sung.  Yet 
when  he  borrowed,  here  and  there,  a  phrase,  an  epithet,  from 
one  of  them,  it  was  never  done  blindly  or  carelessly.  He 
always  verified  his  references  to  nature.  The  phrase  borrowed 
is  sure  to  be  a  true  one,  chosen  with  a  delicate  feeling  for  the 
best,  translated  with  unfailing  skill,  and  enhanced  in  beauty 
and  significance  by  the  setting  which  he  gives  to  it. 

(2.)  For  subjects,  plots,  and  illustrations  Tennyson  turned 
often  to  the  literature  of  the  past.  His  range  of  reading,  even 
in  boyhood,  was  wide  and  various,  as  the  notes  to  Poems  by 
Two  Brothers  show.  At  the  University  he  was  not  only  a  close 
student  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics,  but  a  diligent  reader 


34  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF   HIS    SOURCES 

of  the  English  poets  and  philosophers,  and  a  fair  Italian 
scholar.  In  the  years  after  he  left  college  we  find  him  study- 
ing Spanish  and  German.  In  later  life  he  kept  up  his  studies 
with  undiminished  ardour.  In  1854  he  was  learning  Persian, 
translating  Homer  and  Virgil  to  his  wife,  and  reading  Dante 
with  her.  In  1867  he  was  working  over  Job,  The  Song  of 
Solomon  and  Genesis,  in  Hebrew.  He  takes  the  themes  of 
"The  Lotos-Eaters"  and  "The  Sea-Fairies"  from  Homer; 
"The  Death  of  CEnone"  from  Quintus  Calaber;  "Tiresias" 
from  Euripides;  "Tithonus"  from  an  Homeric  Hymn; 
"Demeter"  and  "CEnone"  from  Ovid;  "Lucretius"  from 
St.  Jerome;  "St.  Simeon  Stylites "  and  "St.  Telemachus" 
from  Theodoret ;  "  The  Cup  "  from  Plutarch ;  "  A  Dream  of 
Fair  Women  "  from  Chaucer ;  "  Mariana  "  from  Shakespeare ; 
"The  Lover's  Tale"  and  "The  Falcon"  from  Boccaccio; 
"Ulysses"  from  Dante;  "The  Revenge"  from  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh;  "The  Brook"  from  Goethe;  "The  Voyage  of 
Maeldune"  from  Joyce's  Old  Celtic  Romances;  "Akbar's 
Dream "  from  the  Persian,  and  "  Locksley  Hall "  from  the 
Arabic ;  "  Romney's  Remorse  "  from  Hayden's  Life  of  Rom- 
ney ;  "Columbus"  from  Washington  Irving.  In  the  Idylls 
of  the  King  he  has  drawn  upon  Sir  Thomas  Malory,  the 
Mabinogion  of  Lady  Charlotte  Guest,  and  the  old  French 
romances.  His  allusions  and  references  to  the  Bible  are 
many  and  beautiful.  (See  The  Poetry  of  Tennyson,  p.  245 
and  Appendix.)  But  he  never  wrote  a  whole  poem  upon  a 
scriptural  subject,  except  a  couple  of  Byronic  imitations  in 
Poems  by  Two  Brothers. 

To  understand  his  method  of  using  a  subject  taken  from 
literature  it  may  be  well  to  study  a  few  examples. 

The  germ  of  "  Ulysses  "  is  found  in  the  following  passage 
from  Dante's  Inferno,  xxvi,  90-129,  where,  in  the  eighth 
Bolgia,  Ulysses  addresses  the  two  poets :  — 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  35 


"  When  I  escaped 
From  Circe,  who  beyond  a  circling  year 
Had  held  me  near  Caieta  by  her  charms, 
Ere  thus  ^Eneas  yet  had  named  the  shore ; 
Nor  fondness  for  my  son,  nor  reverence 
Of  my  old  father,  nor  return  of  love. 
That  should  have  crown'd  Penelope  with  joy, 
Could  overcome  in  me  the  zeal  I  had 
To  explore  the  world,  and  search  the  ways  of  life, 
Man's  evil  and  his  virtue.     Forth  I  sail'd 
Into  the  deep  illimitable  main, 
With  but  one  bark,  and  the  small  faithful  band 
That  yet  cleaved  to  me.     As  Iberia  far. 
Far  as  Marocco,  either  shore  I  saw. 
And  the  Sardinian  and  each  isle  beside 
Which  round  that  ocean  bathes.     Tardy  with  age 
Were  I  and  my  companions,  when  we  came 
To  the  strait  pass,  where  Hercules  ordain'd 
The  boundaries  not  be  overstepp'd  by  man. 
The  walls  of  Seville  to  my  right  I  left, 
On  the  other  hand  already  Ceuta  passed. 
*  Oh  brothers  ! '  I  began, '  who  to  the  west 
Through  perils  without  number  now  have  reach'd ; 
To  this  the  short  remaining  watch,  that  yet 
Our  senses  have  to  wake,  refuse  not  proof 
Of  the  unpeopled  world,  following  the  track 
Of  Phoebus.     Call  to  mind  from  whence  ye  sprang. 
Ye  were  not  form'd  to  live  the  life  of  brutes. 
But  virtue  to  pursue  and  knowledge  high.' 
With  these  few  words  I  sharpen'd  for  the  voyage 
The  mind  of  my  associates,  that  I  then 
Could  scarcely  have  withheld  them.     To  the  dawn 
Our  poop  we  tum'd,  and  for  the  witless  flight 
Made  our  oars  wings,  still  gaining  on  the  left. 
Each  star  of  the  other  pole  night  now  beheld, 
And  ours  so  low,  that  from  the  ocean  floor 
It  rose  not." 

Cary^s  translation  {1806). 


36  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

The  central  motive  of  the  poem  is  undoubtedly  contained  in 
this  passage  :  the  ardent  longing  for  action,  for  experience,  for 
brave  adventure,  persisting  in  Ulysses  to  the  very  end  of  life. 
This  Tennyson  renders  in  his  poem  with  absolute  fidelity.  But 
he  departs  from  the  original  in  several  points.  First,  he  makes 
the  poem  a  dramatic  monologue,  or  character-piece,  spoken 
by  Ulysses  at  Ithaca  to  his  old  companions.  Second,  he 
intensifies  the  dramatic  contrast  between  the  quiet  narrow 
existence  on  the  island  (11.  1-5  ;  33-43)  and  the  free,  joyous, 
perilous  life  for  which  Ulysses  longs  (11.  11-32).  Third,  he 
adds  glimpses  of  natural  scenery  in  wonderful  harmony  with  the 
spirit  of  the  poem  (11.  2,  44,  45,  54-61).  Fourth,  he  brings 
out  with  extraordinary  vividness  the  feeling  which  he  tells  us 
was  in  his  own  heart  when  he  wrote  the  poem,  "  the  need  of 
going  forward  and  braving  the  struggle  of  life." 

Naturally  enough  many  phrases  are  used  which  recall  classic 
writers.  "  The  rainy  Hyades  "  belong  to  Virgil :  the  rowers 
"  sitting  well  in  order,"  to  Homer.  To  "  rust  unburnish'd  " 
(1.  23)  is  an  improved  echo  from  the  speech  of  Shakespeare's 
Ulysses  in  Troilus  and  Cressida.  All  this  adds  to  the  vraisem- 
blance  of  the  poem.  It  is  the  art  by  which  the  poet  evokes 
in  our  minds  the  associations  with  which  literature  has  sur- 
rounded the  figure  of  Ulysses,  a  distinct  personality,  an  endur- 
ing type  in  the  world  of  imagination.  The  proof  of  the  poet's 
strength  lies  in  his  ability  to  meet  the  test  of  comparison 
between  his  own  work  and  that  classic  background  of  which 
his  allusions  frankly  remind  us,  and  in  his  power  to  add  some- 
thing new,  vivid,  and  individual  to  the  picture  which  has  been 
painted  from  so  many  different  points  of  view  by  the  greatest 
artists.  This  test,  it  seems  to  me,  Tennyson  endures  magnifi- 
cently. His  Ulysses  is  not  unworthy  to  rank  with  the  wanderer 
of  Homer,  of  Dante,  of  Shakespeare.  No  Hues  of  theirs  are 
larger  than  Tennyson's  — 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  37 

Yet  all  experience  is  an  arch  wherethro' 

Gleams  that  untravell'd  world,  whose  margin  fades 

For  ever  and  for  ever  when  I  move. 

Nor   has  any  poet  embodied  "  the  unconquerable  mind  of 
man "  more  nobly  than  in  the  final  lines  of  this  poem  :  — 

Tho'  much  is  taken,  much  abides ;  and  tho' 

We  are  not  now  that  strength  which  in  old  days 

Mov'd  earth  and  heaven ;  that  which  we  are,  we  are ; 

One  equal  temper  of  heroic  hearts, 

Made  weak  by  time  and  fate,  but  strong  in  will 

To  strive,  to  .seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield. 

A  poem  of  very  different  character  is  '^  A  Dream  of  Fair 
Women,"  written  when  the  aesthetic  impulse  was  strongest  in 
Tennyson.  The  suggestion  came  from  Chaucer's  Legend  of 
Good  Women.  How  full  and  deep  and  nobly  melancholy  are 
the  chords  with  which  Tennyson  enriches  the  dream-music  to 
which  Chaucer's  poem  gives  the  key-note  :  — 

In  every  land 
I  saw,  wherever  light  illumineth, 
Beauty  and  anguish  walking  hand  in  hand 
The  downward  slope  to  death. 

Those  far-renowned  brides  of  ancient  song 
Peopled  the  hollow  dark,  like  burning  stars. 

And  I  heard  sounds  of  insult,  shame,  and  wrong. 
And  trumpets  blown  for  wars. 

Then  follows  a  passage  full  of  fresh  and  exquisite  descriptions 
of  nature,  the  scenery  of  his  dream  :  — 

Enormous  elm-tree-boles  did  stoop  and  lean 

Upon  the  dusky  brushwood  underneath 
Their  broad  curved  branches,  fledged  with  clearest  green, 

New  from  its  silken  sheath. 


38  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

I  knew  the  flowers,  I  knew  the  leaves,  I  knew 

The  tearful  glimmer  of  the  languid  dawn 
On  those  long,  rank,  dark  wood-walks  drench'd  in  dew, 

Leading  from  lawn  to  lawn. 

The  smell  of  violets,  hidden  in  the  green, 
Pour'd  back  into  my  empty  soul  and  frame 

The  times  when  I  remember  to  have  been 
Joyful  and  free  from  blame. 

This  is  Tennyson's  own  manner,  recognizable,  imitable,  but 
not  easily  equalled.  Now  come  the  fair  women  who  people 
his  visionary  forest.  Each  one  speaks  to  him  and  reveals  her- 
self by  the  lyric  disclosure  of  her  story.  Only  in  one  case  — 
that  of  Rosamond  —  does  the  speaker  utter  her  name.  In  all 
the  others,  it  is  by  some  touch  of  description  made  familiar  to 
us  by  "  ancient  song,"  that  the  figure  is  recognized.  Iphigenia 
tells  how  she  stood  before  the  altar  in  Aulis,  and  saw  her  sorrow- 
ing father,  and  the  waiting  ships,  and  the  crowd  around  her, 
and  the  knife  which  was  to  shed  the  victim's  blood.  (Lucretius, 
De  Rerum  Natura,  i,  85  ff.)  Cleopatra  recalls  the  nights  pf 
revelry  with  Mark  Antony  (Shakespeare,  Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra, Act  i,  sc.  iv),  his  wild  love  (Act  iv,  sc.  viii),  her  queenly 
suicide,  robed  and  crowned,  with  the  bite  of  the  aspic  on  her 
breast  (Act  v,  sc.  ii).  Jephtha's  Daughter  repeats  the  song  with 
which  she  celebrated  Israel's  victory  over  Ammon  {Judges,  xi). 
The  dream  rounds  itself  into  royal  splendour,  glittering  with 
gems  from  legend  and  poetry :  then  it  fades,  never  to  be 
repeated,  — 

How  eagerly  I  sought  to  strike 
Into  that  wondrous  track  of  dreams  again ! 

But  no  two  dreams  are  like. 

Yet  another  type  of  subject  taken  from  literature  is  found  in 
"  Dora."  Mr.  J.  Churton  Collins  says  "  The  whole  plot  .  .  . 
to  the  minutest  details  is  taken  from  a  prose  story  of  Miss 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  39 

Mitford's.  .  .  .  That  the  poet's  indebtedness  to  the  novel 
has  not  been  intimated,  is  due  no  doubt  to  the  fact  that 
Tennyson,  like  Gray,  leaves  his  commentators  to  track  him  to 
his  raw  material."  ^  To  understand  the  carelessness  of  Mr. 
Collins  as  a  critic  it  is  only  necessary  to  point  out  the  fact 
that  the  reference  to  Miss  Mitford's  story  was  distinctly  given 
in  a  note  to  the  first  edition  of  the  poem  in  1842.  But  to 
appreciate  fully  the  bold  inaccuracy  of  his  general  statement 
one  needs  to  read  the  pastoral  of  "Dora  Creswell,"  in  Our  Vil- 
lage, side  by  side  with  Tennyson's  "  Dora."  In  Miss  Mitford's 
story  Dora  is  a  little  girl ;  in  Tennyson's  poem  she  is  a  young 
woman.  Miss  Mitford  tells  nothing  of  the  conflict  between 
the  old  farmer  and  his  son  about  the  proposed  marriage  with 
Dora;  Tennyson  makes  it  prominent  in  the  working  out  of 
the  plot.  Miss  Mitford  makes  the  son  marry  the  delicate 
daughter  of  a  school- mistress ;  but  in  Tennyson's  poem  his 
choice  falls  on  Mary  Morrison,  a  labourer's  daughter,  and,  as 
the  poem  implies,  a  vigourous,  healthy,  independent  girl.  In 
Miss  Mitford's  story  there  is  no  trace  of  Dora's  expulsion  from 
the  old  farmer's  house  after  she  has  succeeded,  by  a  stratagem, 
in  making  him  receive  his  little  grandson,  Mary's  child ;  but 
Tennyson  makes  this  the  turning  point  of  the  most  pathetic 
part  of  his  poem,  —  Dora's  winning  of  Mary's  love,  and  their 
resolve  that  they  will  live  together  and  bring  up  the  child  free 
from  the  influence  of  the  old  farmer's  hardness.  When  the  old 
man  at  last  gives  way,  and  takes  Mary  and  Dora  and  the  child 
home,  Tennyson  adds  the  final  touch  of  insight  to  the  little 

drama :  — 

So  those  four  abode 
Within  one  house  together ;  and  as  years 
Went  forward  Mary  took  another  mate  ; 
But  Dora  lived  unmarried  till  her  death. 

1/.  Churton  Collins^  Illustrations  of  Tennyson.     Chatto  and  Windus,  1891. 


40  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

The  entire  poem  is  written  in  the  simplest  language.  It 
does  not  contain  a  single  simile,  nor  a  word  used  in  an  unfa- 
mihar  sense.  Wordsworth  said,  "  Mr.  Tennyson,  I  have  been 
endeavouring  all  my  life  to  write  a  pastoral  like  your  *  Dora,* 
and  have  not  succeeded."  The  contrast  between  the  prose 
story  with  its  abundance  of  pretty  details,  and  the  poem  in 
beauty  unadorned,  illustrates  the  difference  between  neat  work 
and  fine  work. 

The  vivifying  power  of  Tennyson's  imagination  is  nowhere 
shown  more  clearly  than  in  the  great  use  which  he  makes 
of  comparatively  small  hints  and  phrases  from  other  writers. 
In  his  hands  they  seem  to  expand.  They  are  lifted  up, 
animated,  ennobled. 

A  good  illustration  of  this  kind  of  work  may  be  seen  in  the 
way  in  which  he  handles  the  material  taken  from  Sir  Thomas 
Malory  in  the  Morte  d^ Arthur.  In  Malory  the  King's  rebuke 
to  the  unfaithful  knight  runs  thus  :  "Ah,  traitor  untrue,  now 
hast  thou  betrayed  me  twice.  Who  would  have  weened  that, 
thou  that  hast  been  to  me  so  Hef  and  dear?  And  thou  art 
named  a  noble  knight,  and  would  betray  me  for  the  richness 
of  the  sword  ! "  In  Tennyson  a  new  dramatic  splendour 
enters  into  the  reproach :  — 

'Ah,  miserable  and  unkind,  untrue, 

Unknightly,  traitor-hearted !     Woe  is  me  I 

Authority  forgets  a  dying  king. 

Laid  widow'd  of  the  power  in  his  eye 

That  bow'd  the  will.     I  see  thee  what  thou  are, 

For  thou,  the  latest-left  of  all  my  knights, 

In  whom  should  meet  the  offices  of  all. 

Thou  wouldst  betray  me  for  the  precious  hilt ; 

Either  from  lust  of  gold,  or  like  a  girl 

Valuing  the  giddy  pleasure  of  the  eyes. 

Yet,  for  a  man  may  fail  in  duty  twice. 

And  the  third  time  may  prosper,  get  thee  hence : 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  41 


But,  if  thou  spare  to  fling  Excalibur, 

I  will  arise  and  slay  thee  with  my  hands.' 


In  Malory  the  King's  parting  address,  spoken  from  the  barge, 
is  :  "  Comfort  thyself,  and  do  as  well  as  thou  may'st,  for  in 
me  is  no  trust  for  to  trust  in;  for  I  will  into  the  vale  of 
Avilion  to  heal  me  of  my  grievous  wound  :  and  if  thou  hear 
never  more  of  me  pray  for  my  soul."  In  Tennyson  these  few 
words  become  the  germ  of  the  great  passage  beginning 

'  The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 

And  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways. 

Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world,'  — 

and  closing  with  one  of  the  noblest  utterances  in  regard  to 

prayer  that  can  be  found  in  the  world's  literature. 

Malory  says,  "And  as  soon  as   Sir  Bedivere  had  lost  the 

sight  of  the  barge,   he  wept  and  wailed,  and   so   took  the 

forest."     Tennyson   makes   us   see   the   dark   vessel   moving 

away  :  — 

The  barge  with  oar  and  sail 

Moved  from  the  brink,  like  some  full-breasted  swan 

That,  fluting  a  wild  carol  ere  her  death. 

Ruffles  her  pure  cold  plume,  and  takes  the  flood 

With  swarthy  webs.     Long  stood  Sir  Bedivere 

Revolving  many  memories,  till  the  hull 

Look'd  one  black  dot  against  the  verge  of  dawn, 

And  on  the  mere  the  wailing  died  away. 

The  difference  here  is  between  the  seed  of  poetry  and  the 
flower  fully  unfolded. 

Instances  of  the  same  enlarging  and  transforming  power 
of  Tennyson's  genius  may  be  noted  in  "The  Revenge." 
Again  and  again  he  takes  a  bare  fact  given  by  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  or  Froude,  and  makes  it  flash  a  sudden  lightning 
or  roar  a  majestic  thunder  through  the  smoke  of  the  wild 
sea-fight.    The  whole  poem  is  scrupulously  exact  in  its  fidelity 


42  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

to  the  historical  records,  but  it  lifts  the  story  on  strong  wings 
into  the  realm  of  vivid  imagination.  We  do  not  merely  hear 
about  it :  we  see  it,  we  feel  it. 

Another  illustration  is  found  in  "The  Lotos-Eaters,"  lines 
156-167.  This  is  expanded  from  Lucretius,  De  Rerum 
Natura,  iii,  15.  "The  divinity  of  the  gods  is  revealed, 
and  their  tranquil  abodes  which  neither  winds  do  shake,  nor 
clouds  drench  with  rains,  nor  snow  congealed  by  sharp  frosts 
harms  with  hoary  fall :  an  ever  cloudless  ether  o'ercanopies 
them,  and  they  laugh  with  light  shed  largely  round.  Nature 
too  supplies  all  their  wants  and  nothing  ever  impairs  their 
peace  of  mind."  But  the  vivid  contrast  between  this  luxu- 
rious state  of  dolce  far  niente  and  the  troubles,  toils,  and  con- 
flicts of  human  life,  is  added  by  Tennyson,  and  gives  a  new 
significance  to  the  passage. 

We  come  now  to  Tennyson's  use  of  the  raw  material  lying 
close  at  hand,  as  yet  untouched  by  the  shaping  spirit  of  litera- 
ture, —  newspaper  stories,  speeches,  tales  of  the  country-side, 
legends  and  phrases  passing  from  lip  to  lip,  suggestions  from 
conversations  and  letters.  He  was  quick  to  see  the  value  of 
things  that  came  to  him  in  this  way,  and  at  the  same  time,  as 
a  rule,  most  clear  in  his  discrimination  between  that  which 
was  merely  interesting  or  striking,  and  that  which  was  available 
for  the  purposes  of  poetry,  and  more  particularly  of  such  poetry 
as  he  could  write.  He  did  not  often  make  Wordsworth's  mis- 
take of  choosing  themes  in  themselves  trivial  like  "Alice  Fell " 
or  "  Goody  Blake,"  or  themes  involving  an  incongruous  and 
ridiculous  element,  like  "Peter  Bell"  or  "The  Idiot  Boy." 
If  the  subject  was  one  that  had  a  humourous  aspect,  he  gave 
play  to  his  sense  of  humour  in  treating  it.  If  it  was  serious, 
he  handled  it  in  a  tragic  or  in  a  pathetic  way,  according  to  the 
depth  of  feeling  which  it  naturally  involved.  Illustrations  of 
these  different  methods  may  easily  be  found  among  his  poems. 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  43 

The  "  Northern  Farmer  (Old  Style)  "  was  suggested  by  a 
story  which  his  great-uncle  told  him  about  a  Lincolnshire 
farm-bailiff  who  said,  when  he  was  dying,  "God  A'mighty 
little  knows  what  He  's  aboot,  a-takin'  me,  an'  'Squire  '11  be  so 
mad  an'  all ! "  From  this  saying,  Tennyson  declares,  he  con- 
jectured the  whole  man,  depicted  as  he  is  with  healthy  vigour 
and  kindly  humour.  It  was  the  remark  of  a  rich  neighbour, 
"  When  I  canters  my  'erse  along  the  ramper  I  'ears  proputty, 
proputtyyproputty,''  that  suggested  the  contrasting  character- 
piece,  the  "Northern  Farmer  (New  Style)."  The  poem 
called  "  The  Church- Warden  and  the  Curate  "  was  made  out 
of  a  story  told  to  the  poet  by  the  Rev.  H.  D.  Rawnsley.^ 
"  The  Grandmother  "  was  suggested  in  a  letter  from  Benjamin 
Jowett  giving  the  saying  of  an  old  lady,  "  The  spirits  of  my 
children  always  seem  to  hover  about  me."  "The  Northern 
Cobbler  "  was  founded  on  a  true  story  which  Tennyson  heard 
in  his  youth.  "  Owd  Roa  "  was  the  poet's  version  of  a  report 
that  he  had  read  in  a  newspaper  about  a  black  retriever  which 
saved  a  child  from  a  burning  house.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he 
kept  his  familiarity  with  the  Lincolnshire  variety  of  English, 
and  delighted  to  read  aloud  his  verses  written  in  that  racy  and 
resonant  dialect,  which  is  now,  unfortunately,  rapidly  being  lost 
in  the  dull  march  of  improvement. 

Turning  from  these  ^^«r^-pieces,  we  find  two  of  his  most 
powerful  ballads,  one  intensely  tragic,  the  other  irresistibly 
pathetic,  based  upon  incidents  related  in  contemporary  peri- 
odicals. In  a  penny  magazine  called  Old  Brighton  he  read  a 
story  of  a  young  man  named  Rooke  who  was  hanged  in  chains 
for  robbing  the  mail  some  time  near  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  "When  the  elements  had  caused  the  clothes  and  flesh 
to  decay,  his  aged  mother,  night  after  night,  in  all  weathers,  and 

1  Memories  of  the  Tennysons,  by  H.  D.  Rawnsley,  MacLehose,  Glasgow, 
1900,  pp.  113  ff. 


44  TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES 

the  more  tempestuous  the  weather  the  more  frequent  the  visits, 
made  a  sacred  pilgrimage  to  the  lonely  spot  on  the  Downs,  and 
it  was  noticed  that  on  her  return  she  always  brought  something 
away  with  her  in  her  apron.  Upon  being  watched,  it  was  dis- 
covered that  the  bones  of  the  hanging  man  were  the  objects 
of  her  search,  and  as  the  wind  and  rain  scattered  them  on  the 
ground  she  conveyed  them  to  her  home.  There  she  kept  them, 
and,  when  the  gibbet  was  stripped  of  its  horrid  burden,  in  the 
dead  silence  of  the  night,  she  interred  them  in  the  hallowed 
enclosure  of  Old  ShorSham  Churchyard."  This  is  the  tale. 
Imagine  what  Byron  would  have  made  of  it,  or  Shelley,  if  we 
may  judge  by  the  gruesome  details  of  the  second  part  of  "  The 
Sensitive  Plant."  But  Tennyson  goes  straight  to  the  heart  of 
the  passion  of  motherhood,  surviving  shame  and  sorrow,  con- 
quering fear  and  weakness  in  that  withered  mother's  breast. 
She  tells  her  story  in  a  dramatic  lyric,  a  naked  song  of  tragedy, 
a  solitary,  trembling  war-cry  of  indomitable  love.  Against  this 
second  Rizpah,  greater  in  her  heroism  than  even  the  Hebrew 
mother  whose  deeds  are  told  in  the  Book  of  Samuel,  all  the 
forces  of  law  and  church  and  society  are  arrayed.  But  she 
will  not  be  balked  of  her  human  rights.  She  will  hope  that 
somewhere  there  is  mercy  for  her  boy.  She  will  gather  his 
bones  from  shame  and  lay  them  to  rest  in  consecrated  ground. 

Flesh  of  my  flesh  was  gone,  but  bone  of  my  bone  was  left  — 

I  stole  them  all  from  the  lawyers  —  and  you,  will  you  call  it  a  theft  ? 

My  baby,  the  bones  that  had  suck'd  me,  the  bones  that  had  laugh'd  and 

had  cried,  — 
Theirs  ?    O  no  !     They  are  mine  —  not  theirs  —  they  had  moved  in  my 

side. 

"In  the  Children's  Hospital"  is  a  poem  as  tender  as 
"Rizpah"  is  passionate.  The  story  was  told  to  Tennyson 
by  Miss  Mary  Gladstone.  An  outHne  of  it  was  printed  in  a 
parochial  magazine  under  the  title  "  Alice's  Christmas  Day." 


TENNYSON'S    USE    OF    HIS    SOURCES  45 

The  theme  is  the  faith  and  courage  of  a  child  in  the  presence 
of  pain  and  death.  That  the  poet  at  seventy  years  of  age 
should  be  able  to  enter  so  simply,  so  sincerely,  so  profoundly 
into  the  sweet  secret  of  a  suffering  child's  heart,  is  a  marvellous 
thing.  After  all,  there  must  be  something  moral  and  spiritual 
in  true  poetic  genius.  It  is  not  mere  intellectual  power.  It 
is  temperament,  it  is  sympathy,  it  is  that  power  to  put  one- 
self in  another's  place,  which  lies  so  close  to  the  root  of  the 
Golden  Rule. 


IV 

TENNYSON'S   REVISION    OF   HIS 
TEXT 


47 


Vbs,  o 
Pompilius  sanguis,  carmen  reprehenditCy  quod  non 
Multa  dies  et  tnulta  litura  coercuit,  atque 
Perfectum  decies  non  castigavit  ad  unguem. 

Horace:  De  Arte  Poetica,  291-294. 


48 


IV 

TENNYSON'S   REVISION    OF   HIS    TEXT 

The  changes  which  a  poet  makes,  from  time  to  time,  in  the 
text  of  his  poems  may  be  taken  in  part  as  a  measure  of  his 
power  of  self-criticism,  and  in  part  as  a  record  of  the  growth 
of  his  mind.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  a  man  may  prefer  to 
put  his  new  ideas  altogether  into  new  poems  and  leave  the 
old  ones  untouched ;  true  also  that  the  creative  impulse  may 
be  so  much  stronger  than  the  critical  as  to  make  him  impatient 
of  the  limce  labor  et  mora.  This  was  the  case  with  Robert 
Browning.  There  was  a  time  when  he  made  a  point  of  turn- 
ing out  a  poem  every  day.  When  reproached  for  indifference 
to  form  he  said  that  "the  world  must  take  him  as  it  found 
him." 

But  Tennyson  was  a  constant,  careful  corrector  of  his  own 
verse.  He  held  that  "An  artist  should  get  his  workmanship 
as  good  as  he  can,  and  make  his  work  as  perfect  as  possible. 
A  small  vessel,  built  on  fine  lines,  is  likely  to  float  further 
down  the  stream  of  time  than  a  big  raft."  He  was  keenly 
sensitive  to  the  subtle  effects  of  rhythm,  the  associations  of 
words,  the  beauty  of  form.  The  deepening  of  thought  and 
feeling  which  came  to  him  with  the  experience  of  Hfe  did  not 
make  him  indifferent  to  the  technics  of  his  craft  as  a  poet. 
Indeed  it  seemed  to  intensify  his  desire  for  perfection.  The 
more  he  had  to  say  the  more  carefully  he  wished  to  say  it. 

The  first  and  most  important  revision  of  his  work  began  in 
the  period  of  his  greatest  spiritual  and  intellectual  growth, 
immediately  after  the  death  of  his  friend  Hallam.     The  results 

49 


50         TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT 

of  it  were  seen  in  the  early  poems,  republished  in  the  two 
volumes  of  1842.  From  this  time  forward  there  were  many 
changes  in  the  successive  editions  of  his  poems.  The  Princess, 
published  in  1847,  was  slightly  altered  in  1848,  thoroughly 
revised  in  1850  (when  the  intercalary  songs  were  added),  and 
considerably  enlarged  in  1851.  The  "Ode  on  the  Death  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,"  printed  as  a  pamphlet  in  1852,  was 
immediately  revised  in  1853,  and  again  much  altered  when  it 
appeared  in  the  same  volume  with  Maudm  1855.  As  late  as 
August  1892,  I  heard  Tennyson  questioning  whether  the  line 
describing  the  cross  of  St.  Paul's 

That  shines  over  city  and  river  — 

should  be  changed  to  read, 

That  shines  upon  city  and  river. 

There  were  general  revisions  in  1872  (The  Library  Edition), 
in  1874  (The  Cabinet  Edition),  in  1884  (The  Globe  Edition), 
in  1886  (A  New  Library  Edition,  in  ten  volumes),  in  1889, 
and  in  1891.  The  complete  single-volume  edition,  "with  last 
alterations,"  was  pubHshed  in  1894. 

In  Memoriam  received  less  revision  after  its  first  publication 
than  any  other  of  Tennyson's  larger  poems  \  ^  probably  because 
it  had  been  so  frequently  worked  over  in  manuscript.  Sixteen 
years  passed  between  its  inception  and  its  appearance  in  print. 

I  propose  to  examine  some  of  Tennyson's  changes  in  his 
text  in  order  that  we  may  do  what  none  of  the  critics  have 
yet  done,  —  get  a  clear  idea  of  their  general  character  and  the 
particular  reasons  why  he  made  them.  These  changes  may  be 
classified  under  five  heads,  descriptive  of  the  different  reasons 
for  revision. 

1  Joseph  Jacobs,  Tennyson  and  In  Memoriam,  notes  62  verbal  changes. 
Two  sections  (xxxix,  lix)  have  been  added  to  the  poem. 


TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT  51 

I .  For  simplicity  and  naturalness,  —  There  was  a  tincture 
of  archaism  in  the  early  diction  of  Tennyson,  an  occasional 
use  of  far-fetched  words,  an  unfamiliar  way  of  spelling,  a  general 
flavour  of  conscious  exquisiteness,  which  seemed  to  his  maturer 
judgment  to  savour  of  affectation.  These  blemishes,  due  to 
the  predominance  of  the  aesthetic  impulse,  he  was  careful 
to  remove. 

At  first,  he  tells  us,  he  had  "  an  absurd  antipathy  "  to  the  use 
of  the  hyphen;  and  in  1830  and  1832  he  wrote,  in  '•''yizxx- 
QXidiy  ^  Jlowerplots^  casementcurtain^  marishmosses^  silvergreen ; 
and  in  "  The  Palace  of  Art,"  pleasurehouse,  sunnywarm^ 
torrentbow^  clearwalled.  In  1842  the  despised  hyphen  was 
restored  to  its  place,  and  the  compound  words  were  spelled 
according  to  common  usage.  He  discarded  also  his  early 
fashion  of  accenting  the  ed  in  the  past  participle,  —  wreathed^ 
blenched,  gleaned,  etc. 

Archaic  elisions,  like  "  throne  o'  the  massive  ore "  in 
"  Recollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights  "  (1.  146),  and  "  up  an' 
away"  in  "Mariana"  (1.  50),  and  "whither  away  wi'  the 
singing  sail"  in  "The  Sea-Fairies,"  were  eliminated. 

A  purified  and  chastened  taste  made  him  prefer,  in  the 
"Ode  to  Memory," 

With  plaited  alleys  of  the  trailing  rose  — 

[1842I 

to 

With  pleached  alleys  of  the  trailing  rose. 

[1830] 

In  "  The  Lady  of  Shalott "  he  left  out  some  of  the  more 
fanciful  bits  of  dress  and  decoration  with  which  the  poem  was 
at  first  a  Httle  overloaded ;  for  example  :  — 

A  pearlgarland  winds  her  head : . 
She  leaneth  on  a  velvet  bed, 
Full  royally  apparelled. 


[i842j 


52  TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT 

In  "  Mariana  "  he  substituted, 

The  day 
Was  sloping  toward  his  western  bower, 

for 

The  day 

Downsloped  was  westering  in  his  bower. 

[1830] 

The  general  result  of  such  alterations  as  these  was  to  make 
the  poems  more  simple  and  straightforward.  In  the  same 
way  we  feel  that  there  is  great  gain  in  the  omission  of  the 
stanzas  about  a  balloon  which  were  originally  prefixed  to  "A 
Dream  of  Fair  Women,"  and  of  the  elaborate  architectural 
and  decorative  details  which  overloaded  the  first  version  of 
"The  Palace  of  Art,"  and  in  the  compression  of  the  last 
strophe  of  "The  Lotos- Eaters,"  with  its  curious  pictures  of 
*  the  tusked  seahorse  wallowing  in  a  stripe  of  grassgreen  calm,' 
and  *  the  monstrous  narwhale  swallowing  his  own  foamfountains 
in  the  sea.'  We  can  well  spare  these  marine  prodigies  for  the 
sake  of  such  a  line  as 

RoU'd  to  starboard,  roll'd  to  larboard,  when  the  surge  was  seething  free. 

[1842] 

2.  jFor  melody  and  smoothness.  —  It  was  a  constant  wish  of 
Tennyson  to  make  his  verse  easy  to  read,  as  musical  as  pos- 
sible, except  when  the  sense  required  a  rough  or  broken 
rhythm.  He  had  a  strong  aversion  to  the  hissing  sound  of  the 
letter  s  when  it  comes  at  the  end  of  a  word  and  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  next  word.  He  was  always  trying  to  get  rid  of 
this,  —  "  kicking  the  geese  out  of  the  boat,"  as  he  called  it,  — 
and  he  thought  that  he  had  succeeded.  {Memoir,  II,  p.  14.) 
But  this,  of  course,  was  a  "  flattering  unction."  It  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  find  instances  of  the  double  sibilant  remaining  in  his 
verse  :  for  example  in  "A  Dream  of  Fair  Women  "  (1.  241)  ;  — 

She  lock'd  her  lips :  she  left  me  where  I  stood, 


TENNYSON'S   REVISION    OF   HIS   TEXT  53 

and  **  Sir  Launcelot  and  Queen  Guinevere  "  (1.  23)  :  — 

She  seem'd  a  part  of  joyous  Spring. 

But  for  the  most  part  he  was  careful  to  remove  it,  as  in  the 
following  cases. 

"  The  Lady  of  Shalott "  (1.  156)  :  — 


A  pale,  pale  corpse  she  floated  by. 
A  gleaming  shape  she  floated  by. 

"  Mariana  in  the  South  "  (11.  9,  10)  :  — 


[1833] 
[1842] 


Down  in  the  dry  salt-marshes  stood 

That  house  darklatticed. 

[Omitted,  1842] 

"  Locksley  Hall  "  (1.  182)  :  — 

Let  the  peoples  spin  for  ever  down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change. 

[1842] 

Let  the  great  world  spin  for  ever  down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change. 

[1845] 

Alterations  were  made  in  order  to  get  rid  of  unpleasant 
assonance  in  blank  verse,  as  in  "CEnone"   (1.   19):  — 

She,  leaning  on  a  vine-entwined  stone. 

^  [1833] 

She,  leaning  on  a  fragment  twined  with  vine. 

[1842] 

Disagreeable  alliterations  were  removed,  as  in  "Mariana" 

(1-43):- 

For  leagues  no  other  tree  did  dark. 

^  [1830] 

For  leagues  no  other  tree  did  mark. 

^  [1842] 


"Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington"  (1.  5)  : 

When  laurel-garlanded  leaders  fall. 

^  [1852] 

Mourning  when  their  leaders  fall. 


[1855] 


54         TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS  TEXT 

Imperfect  rhymes  were  corrected,  as  in  "  Mariana  in  the 
South"  (1.  85):  — 

One  dry  cicala's  summer  song 

At  night  filled  all  the  gallery, 

Backward  the  latticeblind  she  flung 

And  leaned  upon  the  balcony. 

^  [1833] 

At  eve  a  dry  cicala  sung, 

There  came  a  sound  as  of  the  sea ; 

Backward  the  lattice-blind  she  flung, 

And  lean'd  upon  the  balcony, 

^  ^  [1842] 

Incongruous  and  harsh   expressions   were  removed,  as   in 
*'The  Poet"  (1.  45):  — 

And  in  the  bordure  of  her  robe  was  writ 

Wisdom,  a  name  to  shake 

Hoar  anarchies,  as  with  a  thunderfit. 

[1830] 

And  in  her  raiment's  hem  was  traced  in  flame 

Wisdom,  a  name  to  shake 
All  evil  dreams  of  power  —  a  sacred  name, 

[1842] 

Two  very  delicate  and  perfect  examples  of  the  same  kind 
of  improvement  are   found   in    the    revision   of   "  Claribel " 

(1.  .1):- 


At  noon  the  bee  low-hummeth. 
At  noon  the  wild  bee  hummeth, 
and  line  17:  — 

The  fledgling  throstle  lispeth. 

The  callow  throstle  lispeth. 


[1830] 
[1842] 

[1830] 
[1842] 


Some  of  the  alterations  in   the  Wellington  Ode  are  very 
happy.     Line  79  originally  read, 

And  ever-ringing  avenues  of  song. 


TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT  55 

How  much  more  musical  is  the  present  version  :  — 

And  ever-echoing  avenues  of  song ! 

In  line  133,  "world's  earthquake"  was  changed  to  "world- 
earthquake."     Line  267, — 

Hush,  the  Dead  March  sounds  in  the  people's  ears, — 

[1853] 

was  wonderfully  deepened  in  1855,  when  it  was  altered  to 
Hush,  the  Dead  March  wails  in  the  people's  ears. 

3.  For  clearness  of  thought.  —  The  most  familiar  instance  of 
this  kind  of  revision  is  in  "A  Dream  of  Fair  Women."  In 
1833  the  stanza  describing  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigenia  ended 
with  the  lines 

One  drew  a  sharp  knife  thro'  my  tender  throat ; 
Slowly,  —  and  nothing  more. 

A  critic  very  properly  inquired  *  what  more  she  would  have.' 
The  Hues  were  changed  to 

The  bright  death  quiver'd  at  the  victim's  throat ; 
Touch'd ;  and  I  knew  no  more. 

There  is  another  curious  illustration  in  "  Lady  Clara  Vere 
de  Vere."     In  1842  lines  49-52  read, 

Trust  me,  Clara  Vere  de  Vere, 

From  yon  blue  heavens  above  us  bent 

The  gardener  Adam  and  his  wife 
Smile  at  the  claims  of  long  descent. 

Line  51  was  changed,  in  1845,  ^^ 

The  grand  old  gardener  and  his  wife, 

which  was  both  weak  and  ambiguous.     One  might  fancy  (as 
a  young  lady  of  my  acquaintance  did)    that  the  poet  was 


56  TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT 

speaking  of  some  fine  old  gardener  on  the  De  Vere  estate,  who 
had  died  and  gone  to  heaven.  In  1875  Tennyson  restored 
the  original  and  better  reading,  "The  gardener  Adam." 

A  few  more  illustrations  will  suffice  to  show  how  careful  he 
was  to  make  his  meaning  clear. 

"  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington"  (1.  157)  :  — 

Of  most  unbounded  reverence  and  regret, 

^  [1852] 

But  it  is  hard  to  see  how  reverence  can  be  more  than  unbounded  ; 
so  the  line  was  changed  : 

Of  boundless  reverence  and  regret. 

^  [1853] 

Of  boundless  love  and  reverence  and  regret. 

^  [1855] 

"The  Marriage  of  Geraint"  (1.  70)  :  — 
They  sleeping  each  by  other. 

They  sleeping  each  by  either. 

[1874] 

"  Lancelot  and  Elaine"  (1.  45)  :  — 

And  one  of  these,  the  kins^.  had  on  a  crown. 

^  [1859] 

And  he,  that  once  was  kins^.  had  on  a  crown. 

[1874] 

(L.  168):  — 

Thither  he  made,  and  wound  the  gateway  horn. 

[1859] 
Thither  he  made,  and  blew  the  gateway  horn. 

(L.  1147):  — 

Steer'' d  by  the  dumb,  went  upward  with  the  flood. 

[1859] 
Oar'd  by  the  dumb,  went  upward  with  the  flood. 

[1874] 
"  Guinevere"  (1.  470)  :  — 

To  honour  his  own  word  as  if  his  God's. 


TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT  57 

This  line  was  not   in   the    1859   version.     It   enhances  the 
solemnity  of  the  oath  of  initiation  into  the  Round  Table. 
"The  Passing  of  Arthur"  (11.  462-469)  :  — 

Thereat  once  more  he  moved  about,  and  clomb 
Ev'n  to  the  highest  he  could  cUmb,  and  saw, 
Straining  his  eyes  beneath  an  arch  of  hand, 
Or  thought  he  saw,  the  speck  that  bare  the  King, 
Down  that  long  water  opening  on  the  deep 
Somewhere  far  off,  pass  on  and  on,  and  go 
From  less  to  less  and  vanish  into  light. 
And  the  new  sun  rose  bringing  the  new  year. 

These  lines,  with  others,  were  added  to  "  Morte  d' Arthur," 
the  original  form  of  this  idyll,  in  order  to  bring  out  the  distant 
gleam  of  hope  which  is  thrown  upon  the  close  of  the  epic  by  the 
vision  of  Arthur's  immortality  and  the  prophecy  of  his  return. 

4.  For  truth  in  the  description  of  nature.  —  The  alterations 
made  for  this  reason  are  very  many.     I  give  a  few  examples. 

"The  Lotos-Eaters"  (1.  7)  :  — 

Above  the  valley  burned  the  golden  moon. 

[1833] 
But  in  the  afternoon   (1.  3)  the  moon  is  of  palest  silver ;  so 
the  line  was  revised  thus  :  — 

Full-faced  above  the  valley  stood  the  moon. 

[1842] 

In  the  version  of  1833,  line  16  was  written  as  follows :  — 

Three  thundercloven  thrones  of  oldest  snow. 

But  in  the  first  place,  it  is  the  lightning,  not  the  thunder, 
which  cleaves  the  mountains ;  and  in  the  second  place,  a 
snow-peak,  even  if  cloven  by  hghtning,  would  soon  be  covered 
with  snow  again;  the  cleft  would  be  hidden.  So  the  line 
was  changed  to 

Three  silent  pinnacles  of  aged  snow. 


58         TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS  TEXT 

In  "  Locksley  Hall "  (1.  3)  the  first  reading  was 

'T  is  the  place,  and  round  the  gables^  as  of  old,  the  curlews  call. 

[1842] 
But  the  curlews  do  not  fly  close  to  the  roofs  of  houses,  as  the 
swallows  do ;  so  the  line  was  changed  to 

'T  is  the  place,  and  all  around  it,  as  of  old,  the  curlews  call. 

[1845] 
"  Mariana"  (11.  3,  4)  :  — 

The  rusted  nails  fell  from  the  knots 

That  held  \)ciQ  peach  to  ih.e  gar denwall. 

[1830] 

This  was  not  quite  characteristic  of  a  Lincolnshire  garden ;  so 
it  was  altered  in  1863  and  1872  to  the  present  form  :  — 

That  held  the  pear  to  the  gable-wall. 

"  The  Poet's  Song  "  (1.  9)  :  — 

The  swallow  stopped  as  he  hunted  the  bee. 

[1842] 
But  swallows  do  not  hunt  bees ;  so  the  Hne  was  changed  to 

The  swallow  stopt  as  he  hunted  the  fly. 

^  ^      [1884] 

"Lancelot  and  Elaine"  (11.  652,  653)  :  — 

No  surer  than  our  falcon  yesterday, 
Who  lost  the  hem  we  slipt  him  at. 

[1859] 
But  the  female  falcon,  being  larger  and  fiercer,  is  the  one 

usually  employed  in  the  chase ;  so  him  was  changed  to  her. 
There  is  a  very  interesting  addition  to  In  Memoriamy  which 
bears  witness  to  Tennyson's  scrupulous  desire  to  be  truthful  in 
natural  description.  Section  ii  is  addressed  to  an  old  yew- 
tree  in  the  graveyard,  and  contains  this  stanza  :  — 

O  not  for  thee  the  glow,  the  bloom. 

Who  changest  not  in  any  gale, 

Nor  branding  summer  suns  avail 
To  touch  thy  thousand  years  of  gloom. 


TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT  59 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  yew  has  its  season  of  bloom ;  and 
so  in  Section  xxxix,  added  in  187 1,  we  find  these  lines :  — 

To  thee  too  comes  the  golden  hour 
When  flower  is  feeling  after  flower  ; 
But  Sorrow,  —  fixt  upon  the  dead, 

And  darkening  the  dark  graves  of  men,  — 
What  whisper'd  from  her  lying  lips  ? 
Thy  gloom  is  kindled  at  the  tips, 

And  passes  into  gloom  again. 

5 .  For  deeper  meaning  and  human  interest.  —  In  this  respect 
the  revision  of  "The  Palace  of  Art "  is  most  important.  The 
stanzas  added  in  the  later  editions  of  this  poem  have  the  effect 
of  intensifying  its  significance,  making  the  sin  of  self-centred 
isolation  stand  out  sharply  (11.  197-204),  displaying  the  scorn- 
ful contempt  of  the  proud  soul  for  common  humanity  (11.  145- 
160),  and  throwing  over  the  picture  the  Pharisee's  robe  of 
moral  self-complacency  (11.  205-208).  The  introduction  in 
1833  began  as  follows  : 

I  send  you,  friend,  a  sort  of  allegory, 
(You  are  an  artist  and  will  understand 
Its  many  lesser  meanings). 

But  in  1842  the  lines  read 

I  send  you  here  a  sort  of  allegory, 
(For  you  will  understand  it). 

The  poet  no  longer  addresses  his  work  to  an  artist :  he  speaks 
more  broadly  to  man  as  man.  For  the  same  reason  he  omits  a 
great  many  of  the  purely  decorative  stanzas,  and  concentrates 
the  attention  on  the  spiritual  drama. 

The  addition  of  the  Conclusion  to  "The  May  Queen" 
(1842)  is  another  instance  of  Tennyson's  enrichment  of  his 
work  with  warmer  human  interest.     In  the  first  two  parts 


6o  TENNYSON'S   REVISION    OF   HIS   TEXT 

there  is  nothing  quite  so  intimate  in  knowledge  of  the  heart 
as  the  lines 

O  look !  the  sun  begins  to  rise,  the  heavens  are  in  a  glow ; 
He  shines  upon  a  hundred  fields,  and  all  of  them  I  know. 

There  is  nothing  quite  so  true  to  the  simplicity  of  childlike 
faith  as  the  closing  verses  :  — 

To  lie  within  the  light  of  God,  as  I  lie  upon  your  breast  — 
And  the  wicked  cease  from  troubling,  and  the  weary  are  at  rest. 

The  sixth  strophe  of  the  Choric  Song  in  "The  Lotos- 
Eaters,"  beginning 

Dear  is  the  memory  of  our  wedded  lives, 
And  dear  the  last  embraces  of  our  wives 
And  their  warm  tears,  — 

was  added  in  1842. 

In  the  "  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,"  lines 
266-270  were  added  after  the  first  edition  :  — 

On  God  and  Godlike  men  we  build  our  trust. 
Hush,  the  Dead  March  wails  in  the  people's  ears : 
The  dark  crowd  moves,  and  there  are  sobs  and  tears : 
The  black  earth  yawns :  the  mortal  disappears ; 
Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust. 

This  passage  brings  a  deep  note  of  natural  emotion  into  the 
poem.  The  physical  effect  of  the  actual  interment,  the  sight 
of  the  yawning  grave,  the  rattle  of  the  handful  of  earth  thrown 
upon  the  coffin,  are  vividly  expressed. 

A  noteworthy  change  for  the  sake  of  expressing  a  deeper 
human  feeling  occurs  in  "  The  Lady  of  Shalott."  The  original 
form  of  the  last  stanza  was  merely  picturesque  :  it  described 
the  wonder  and  perplexity  of  "  the  wellfed  wits  at  Camelot " 


TENNYSON'S   REVISION   OF   HIS   TEXT  6l 

when  they  looked  upon  the  dead  maiden  in  her  funeral  barge 
and  read  the  parchment  on  her  breast :  — 

"  The  web  was  woven  curiously^ 
The  charm  is  broken  utterly y 
Draw  near  and  fear  not — this  is  /, 
The  Lady  of  ShalottP 

[1833] 

But  the  revised  version  makes  them  "cross  themselves  for 
fear,"  and  brings  the  knight  for  secret  love  of  whom  the 
maiden  died  to  look  upon  her  face :  — 

But  Lancelot  mused  a  little  space ; 
He  said,  '  She  has  a  lovely  face ; 
God  in  his  mercy  lend  her  grace, 
The  Lady  of  Shalott.' 

The  addition  of  the  songs  to  The  Princess  (1850)  must  be 
regarded  as  evidence  of  a  desire  to  deepen  the  meaning  of 
the  story.  Tennyson  said  distinctly  that  he  wished  to  make 
people  see  that  the  child  was  the  heroine  of  the  poem.  The 
songs  are  a  great  help  in  this  direction.  In  the  Idylls  of  the 
King  Tennyson  took  pains,  as  he  went  on  with  the  series,  to 
eliminate  all  traces  of  the  old  tradition  which  made  Modred 
the  son  of  King  Arthur  and  his  half-sister  Bellicent,  thus 
sweeping  away  the  taint  of  incest  from  the  story,  and  reveal- 
ing the  catastrophe  as  the  result  of  the  unlawful  love  of 
Lancelot  and  Guinevere.  (See  The  Poetry  of  Tennyson^ 
pp.  171  ff.)  He  introduced  many  allegorical  details  into  the 
later  Idylls.  And  he  endeavoured  to  enhance  the  epic  dignity 
and  significance  of  the  series  by  inserting  the  closing  passages 
of  "The  Coming  of  Arthur"  and  "The  Passing  of  Arthur," 
which  present  clearly  the  idea  of  a  great  kingdom  rising  under 
Arthur's  leadership  and  falling  into  ruin  with  his  defeat. 


62  TENNYSON'S   REVISION    OF   HIS   TEXT 

A  general  study  of  the  changes  which  Tennyson  made  in 
the  text  of  his  poems  will  show,  beyond  a  doubt,  not  only 
that  he  was  sensitive  to  the  imperfections  in  his  work  and 
ready  to  profit,  at  least  to  a  certain  extent,  by  the  suggestions 
of  critics ;  but  also  that  his  skill  as  an  artist  was  refined  by 
use,  and  that  his  thoughts  of  life  and  his  sympathies  with  man- 
kind deepened  and  broadened  with  advancing  years.  Thus 
there  was  a  compensation  for  the  loss  of  something  of  the 
delicate,  inimitable  freshness,  the  novel  and  enchanting  charm 
which  breathed  from  the  lyrics  of  his  youth. 


V 

THE   QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S 
POETRY 


63 


■  His  music  was  the  south-wind's  sigh, 
His  lamp,  the  maiden's  downcast  eye, 
And  ever  the  spell  of  beauty  came 
And  turned  the  drowsy  world  to  flame. 
By  lake  and  stream  and  gleaming  hall 
And  modest  copse  and  the  forest  tall, 
"Where'er  he  went,  the  magic  guide 
Kept  its  place  by  the  poet's  side. 
Said  melted  the  days  like  cups  of  pearl. 
Served  high  and  low,  the  lord  and  the  churl, 
Loved  harebells  nodding  on  a  rock, 
A  cabin  hung  with  curling  smoke. 
Ring  of  axe  or  hum  of  wheel 
Or  gleam  which  use  can  paint  on  steel, 
And  huts  and  tents ;  nor  loved  he  less 
Stately  lords  in  palaces, 
Princely  women  hard  to  please. 
Fenced  by  form  and  ceremony, 
Decked  by  rites  and  courtly  dress 
And  etiquette  of  gentilesse. 

He  came  to  the  green  ocean's  brim 
And  saw  the  wheeling  sea-birds  skim, 
Summer  and  winter,  o'er  the  wave 
Like  creatures  of  a  skiey  mould 
Impassible  to  heat  or  cold. 
He  stood  before  the  tumbling  main 
With  joy  too  tense  for  sober  brain ; 

And  he,  the  bard,  a  crystal  soul 
Sphered  and  concentric  with  the  whole." 

Emerson  :  The  Poetic  Gift. 


64 


THE    QUALITIES    OF   TENNYSON'S    POETRY 

If  an  unpublished  poem  by  Tennyson  —  say  an  idyll  of 
chivalry,  a  classical  character-piece,  a  modern  dramatic  lyric, 
or  even  a  little  song  —  were  discovered,  and  given  out  with- 
out his  name,  it  would  be  easy,  provided  it  belonged  to  his 
best  work,  to  recognize  it  as  his.  But  it  is  by  no  means  easy 
to  define  just  what  it  is  that  makes  his  poetry  recognizable. 
It  is  not  the  predominance  of  a  single  trait  or  characteristic. 
If  that  were  the  case,  it  would  be  a  simple  matter  to  put  one's 
finger  upon  the  hall-mark.  It  is  not  a  fixed  and  exaggerated 
mannerism.  That  is  the  sign  of  the  Tennysonians,  rather  than 
of  their  master.  His  style  varies  from  the  luxuriance  of  "  A 
Dream  of  Fair  Women  "  to  the  simplicity  of  "  The  Oak,"  from 
the  lightness  of  "The  Brook"  to  the  stateliness  of  "Guine- 
vere." There  is  as  much  difference  of  manner  between  "  The 
Gardener's  Daughter"  and  "Ulysses,"  as  there  is  between 
Wordsworth's  "Solitary  Reaper"  and  his  "Dion." 

The  most  remarkable  thing  about  Tennyson's  poetry  as  a 
whole  is  that  it  expresses  so  fully  and  so  variously  the  qualities 
of  a  many-sided  and  well-balanced  nature.  But  when  we  look 
at  the  poems  separately  we  see  that,  in  almost  every  case,  the 
quality  which  is  most  closely  related  to  the  subject  of  the  poem 
plays  the  leading  part  in  giving  it  colour  and  form.  There  is 
a  singular  fitness,  a  harmonious  charm  in  his  work,  not  unlike 
that  which  distinguishes  the  painting  of  Titian.  It  is  not, 
indeed,  altogether  spontaneous  and  unstudied.  It  has  the 
effect  of  choice,  of  fine  selection.     But  it  is  inevitable  enough 

6S 


66  QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

in  its  way.  The  choice  being  made,  it  would  be  hard  to  better 
it.  The  words  are  the  right  words,  and  each  stands  in  its 
right  place. 

The  one  thing  that  cannot  justly  be  said  of  it,  it  seems  to 
me,  is  precisely  what  Tennyson  says  in  a  certain  place  :  '■ — 

I  do  but  sing  because  I  must, 
And  pipe  but  as  the  linnets  sing. 

That  often  seems  true  of  Bums  and  Shelley,  sometimes  of 
Keats.  But  it  is  not  true  of  Milton,  of  Gray,  of  Tennyson. 
They  do  not  pour  forth  their  song 

"  In  profuse  strains  of  unpremeditated  art." 

I  shall  endeavour  in  the  remaining  pages  of  this  introduction 
to  describe  and  illustrate  some  of  the  qualities  which  are  found 
in  Tennyson's  poetry. 

I.  Hisjdiction  is  lucid,  su^estive,  melodious.  He  avoids, 
for  the  most  part,  harsh  and  strident  words,  intricate  .con- 
structions, strange  rhymes,  startling  contrasts.  He  chooses 
expressions  which  have  a  natural  rhythm,  an  easy  flow,  a 
clear  meaning.  He  has  a  rare  mastery  of  metrical  resources. 
Many  of  his  lyrics  seem  to  be  composed  to  a  musical  cadence 
which  his  inward  ear  has  caught  in  some  happy  phrase. 

He  prefers  to  use  those  metrical  forms  which  are  free  and 
fluent,  and  in  which  there  is  room  for  subtle  modulations 
and  changes.  In  the  stricter  modes  of  verse  he  is  less  happy. 
The  sonnet,  the  Spenserian  stanza,  the  heroic  couplet,  the 
swift  couplet  (octosyllabic),  —  these  he  seldom  uses,  and  little 
of  his  best  work  is  done  in  these  forms.  Even  in  four-stress 
iambic  triplets,  the  metre  in  which  "The  Two  Voices  "  is  written, 
he  seems  constrained  and  awkward.  He  is  at  his  best  in  the 
long  swinging  lines  of  "  Locksley  Hall "  (eight-stress  trochaic 
couplets)  /or  in  a  free  blank  verse  (five-stress  iambic),  which 
admits  all  the  Miltonic  liberty  of  shifted  and  hovering  accents, 


QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY  67 

grace-notes,  omitted  stresses,  and  the  like ;  or  in  mixed  meas- 
ures like  "The  Revenge  "  and  the  Wellington  Ode,  where  the 
rhythm  is  now  iambic  and  now  trochaic ;  or  in  metres  which 
he  invented,  like  "The  Daisy,"  or  revived,  like  In  Memo- 
riam ;  or  in  Httle  songs  hke  "  Break,  break,  break,"  and  "  The 
Bugle  Song,"  where  the  melody  is  as  unmistakable  and  as 
indefinable  as  the  feeling. 

He  said,  "  Englishmen  will  spoil  English  verses  by  scanning 
them  when  they  are  reading,  and  they  confound  accent  with 
quantity."  "  In  a  blank  verse  you  can  have  from  three  up  to 
eight  beats ;  but,  if  you  vary  the  beats  unusually,  your  ordinary 
newspaper  critic  sets  up  a  howl."  {Memoir^  II,  12,  14.) 
He  liked  the  "j;mi-on  "  from^line  to  U  the  overflow  from 
stanza  to  stanza.  Much  of  his  verse  is  impossible  to  analyze 
if  you  insist  on  looking  for  regular  feet  according  to  the 
classic  models ;  but  if  you  read  it  according  to  the  principle 
which  Coleridge  explained  in  the  preface  to  "  Christabel,"  by 
"  countings jyie  accents,  not  the  syllables,"  you  will  find  that 
itfalls  into  a  natural  rhythm.  It  seems  as  if  his  own  way  of 
reding  it  aloud,  in  a  sort  of  chant,  were  almost  inevitable. 
w^This  close  relation  of  his  verse  to  music  may  be  felt  in 
Maud,  and  in  his  perfect  little  lyrics  like  the  autumnal 
"Song,"  "The  Throstle,"  "Tears^idle  tgars,"  "Sweet  and 
low,"  and  "  Far  —  far  —  away."  Here  also  we  see  the  power 
of  suggestiveness,  the  atmospheric  effect,  in  his  diction.  Every 
word  is  in  harmony  with  the  central  emotion  of  the  song,  A 
vague,  delicate,  intimate,  mingled  of  sweetness  and  sadness^^l|;3;|^r 

The  most  beautiful  illustration  of  this  is  "Crossing  the  Bar." 
Notice  how  the  metre,  in  each  stanza,  rises  to  the  long  third 
line,  and  sinks  away  again  in  the  shorter  fourth  line.  The 
poem  is  in  two  parts ;  the  first  stanza  corresponding,  in  every 
line,  to  the  third ;  the  second  stanza,  to  the  fourth.  In  each 
division  of  the  song  there  is  first,  a  clear,  solemn,  tranquil 


6S  QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

note,  —  a  reminder  that  the  day  is  over  and  it  is  time  to 
depart.  The  accent  hovers  over  the  words  "  sunset "  and 
"  twihght,"  and  falls  distinctly  on  *'  star  "  and  "  bell."  Then 
come  two  thoughts  of  sadness,  the  "moaning  of  the  bar,"  the 
"  sadness  of  farewell,"  from  which  the  voyager  prays  to  be 
delivered.  The  answer  follows  in  the  two  pictures  of  peace 
and  joy,  —  the  full,  calm  tide  bearing  him  homeward,  —  the 
vision  of  the  unseen  Pilot  who  has  guided  and  will  guide 
him  to  the  end  of  his  voyage.  Every  image  in  the  poem  is 
large  and  serene.     Every  word  is  simple,  clear,  harmonious. 

The  movement  of  a  very  different  kind  of  music  —  martial, 
sonorous,  thrilling  —  may  be  heard  in  "The  Charge  of  the 
Heavy  Brigade." 

Up  the  hill,  up  the  hill, 
Gallopt  the  gallant  three  hundred,  the  Heavy  Brigade, — 

reproduces  with  extraordinary  force  the  breathless,  toilsome, 
thundering  assault. 

His  verse  often  seems  to  adapt  itself  to  his  meaning  with 
an  almost  magical  effect.  Thus,  in  the  Wellington  Ode,  when 
the  spirit  of  Nelson  welcomes  the  great  warrior  to  his  tomb  in 
St.  Paul's,  — 

Who  is  he  that  cometh,  like  an  honour'd  guest, 

With  banner  and  with  music,  with  soldier  and  with  priest, 

With  a  nation  weeping,  and  breaking  on  my  rest  ?  — 

we  can  almost  hear  the  funeral  march  and  see  the  vast,  sorrow- 
ful procession.     In  "  Locksley  Hall,"  — 

Love  took  up  the  harp  of  Life,  and  smote  on  all  the  chords  with  might ; 
Smote  the  chord  of  Self,  that,  trembling,  pass'd  in  music  out  of  sight,  — 

what  value  there  is  in  the  word  "  trembling  "  and  in  the  slight 
secondary  pause  that  follows  it ;  how  the  primary  pause  in  the 
preceding  bar,  dividing  it,  emphasizes  the  word  "Self."     In 


QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S    POETRY  69 

The  Princess  there  is  a  line  describing  one  of  the  curious 
Chinese  ornaments  in  which  a  series  of  openwork  balls  are 
carved  one  inside  of  another  :  — 

Laborious  orient  ivory  sphere  in  sphere. 

One  can  almost  see  the  balls  turning  and  glistening.  In  the 
poem  "To  Virgil"  there  is  a  verse  praising  the  great  Man- 
tuan's  lordship  over  language  :  — 

All  the  charm  of  all  the  Muses  often  flowering  in  a  lonely  word. 

This  illustrates  the  very  quality  that  it  describes.  "Flower- 
ing "  is  the  magical  word. 

But  it  is  not  so  often  the  "  lonely  word  "  that  is  wonderful 
in  Tennyson,  as  it  is  the  company  of  words  which  blossom 
together  in  colour-harmony,  the  air  of  lucid  beauty  that 
envelops  the  many  features  of  a  landscape  and  blends  them 
in  a  perfect  picture.  This  is  his  peculiar  charm ;  and  it  is 
illustrated  in  many  passages,  but  nowhere  better  than  in  In 
Memoriam,  Ixxxvi,  — 

Sweet  after  showers,  ambrosial  air, 

That  rollest  from  the  gorgeous  gloom 
Of  evening  over  brake  and  bloom 

And  meadow, — 

and  in  the  perfect  description  of  autumn's  sad  tranquillity, 
Section  xi, — 

Calm  on  the  seas,  and  silver  sleep, 

And  waves  that  sway  themselves  in  rest. 
And  dead  calm  in  that  noble  breast 

Which  heaves  but  with  the  heaving  deep. 

2.  Tennyson's  clps_^ness-XiLx)bs.Qrvation,  fidelity  of  descrip- 
tion, and  felicity  of  expression  in  nature-poetry  have  often 
been  praised.  In  spite  of  his  near-sightedness  he  saw  things 
with  great  clearness  and  accuracy.      All  his  senses  seem  to 


70  QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

have  been  alert  and  true.  In  this  respect  he  was  better  fitted 
to  be  an  observer  than  Wordsworth,  in  whom  the  colour-sense 
was  not  especially  vivid,  and  whose  poetry  shows  little  or  no 
evidence  of  the  sense  of  fragrance,  although  his  ears  caught 
sounds  with  wonderful  fineness  and  his  eyes  were  quick  to  note 
forms  and  movements.  Bayard  Taylor  once  took  a  walk  with 
Tennyson  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  afterward  wrote  :  "  During 
the  conversation  with  which  we  beguiled  the  way  I  was  struck 
with  the  variety  of  his  knowledge.  Not  a  Uttle  flower  on  the 
downs,  which  the  sheep  had  spared,  escaped  his  notice,  and 
the  geology  of  the  coast,  both  terrestrial  and  submarine,  was 
perfectly  familiar  to  him.  I  remembered  the  remark  I  once 
heard  from  the  lips  of  a  distinguished  English  author  (Thack- 
eray), that  'Tennyson  was  the  wisest  man  he  knew,'  and  could 
well  believe  that  he  was  sincere  in  making  it." 

But  Tennyson's  relation  to  nature  differed  from  Wordsworth's 
in  another  respect  than  that  which  has  been  mentioned,  and 
one  in  which  the  advantage  lies  with  the  earlier  poet.  Words- 
worth had  a  personal  intimacy  with  nature,  a  confiding  and 
rejoicing  faith  in  her  unity,  her  life,  and  her  deep  beneficence, 
which  made  him  able  to  say  :  — 

"  This  prayer  I  make, 
Knowing  that  Nature  never  did  betray 
The  heart  that  loved  her :  't  is  her  privilege, 
Through  all  the  years  of  this  our  life,  to  lead 
From  joy  to  joy :  for  she  can  so  inform 
The  mind  that  is  vv^ithin  us,  so  impress 
With  quietness  and  beauty,  and  so  feed 
With  lofty  thoughts,  that  neither  evil  tongues, 
Rash  judgments,  nor  the  sneers  of  selfish  men, 
Nor  greetings  where  no  kindness  is,  nor  all 
The  dreary  intercourse  of  daily  life. 
Shall  e'er  prevail  against  us,  or  disturb 
Our  cheerful  faith,  that  all  which  we  behold 
Is  full  of  blessings." 


QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY  71 

There  is  no  utterance  like  this  in  Tennyson's  poetry.  He 
had  not  a  profound  and  permanent  sense  of  that  "  something 
far  more  deeply  interfused  "  in  nature  which  gives  her  a  con- 
soHng,  hberating,  nourishing  power,  —  a  maternal  power.  In 
"  Enoch  Arden  "  the  solitude  of  nature,  even  in  her  richest 
beauty,  is  terrible.  In  "  Locksley  Hall"  the  disappointed 
lover  calls  not  on  Mother-Nature,  but  on  his  "  Mother-Age," 
the  age  of  progress,  of  advancing  knowledge,  to  comfort  and 
help  him.  In  Maud  the  unhappy  hero  says,  not  that  he 
will  turn  to  nature,  but  that  he  will  ^bury  himself  in 
Whether  it  was  because  Tennyson  saw  the  harsher,  sterner 
aspects  of  nature  more  clearly  than  Wordsworth  did,  or  because 
he  had  more  scientific  knowledge,  or  because  he  was  less  simple 
and  serene,  it  remains  true  that  he  did  not  have  that  steady 
and  glad  confidence  in  her  vital  relation  to  the  spirit  of  man, 
J:hat^y_eipowering  joy  in  surrender  to  her  purifying  and  mould- 
ing influence,  which  Wordsworth  expressed  in  the  "  Lines  com- 
posed a  few  miles  above  Tintern  Abbey,"  in  1798,  and  in 
"Devotional  Incitements"  in  1832,  and  in  many  other  poems 
written  between  these  dates.  Yet  it  must  be  observed  that 
Wordsworth  himself,  in  later  Hfe,  felt  some  abatement  of  his 
unquestioning  and  all-sufficing  faith  in  nature,  or  at  least 
admitted  the  need  of  something  beside  her  ministry  to  sat- 
isfy all  the  wants  of  the  human  spirit.  For  in  "An  Evening 
Voluntary  "  (1834),  he  writes  :  —    ' 

"  By  grace  divine, 
Not  otherwise,  O  Nature  !  are  we  thine." 

Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  has  observed  that  the  poetry  of  both 
Scott  and  Byron  contains  many  utterances  of  delight  in  the 
wild  and  solitary  aspects  of  nature ;  and  that  we  find  little 
or  nothing  of  this  kind  in  Tennyson.  From  this  Mr.  Brooke 
infers  that  he  had  less  real  love  of  nature  for  her  own  sake 


72  QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

than  the  two  poets  named.  The  inference  is  not  well 
grounded.  * 

Both  Scott  and  Byron  were  very  dependent  upon  social 
pleasure  for  their  enjoyment  of  life,  —  much  more  so  than 
Tennyson.  Any  one  who  will  read  Byron's  letters  may  judge 
how  far  his  professed  passion  for  the  solitudes  of  the  ocean 
and  the  Alps  was  sincere,  and  how  far  it  was  a  pose.  Indeed, 
in  one  place,  if  I  mistake  not,  he  maintains  the  theory  that  it 
is  the  presence  of  man's  work  —  the  ship  on  the  ocean,  the 
city  among  the  hills  —  that  lends  the  chief  charm  to  nature. 

Tennyson  was  one  of  the  few  great  poets  who  have  proved 
their  love  of  nature  by  living  happily  in  the  country.  From 
boyhood  up  he  was  well  content  to  spend  long,  lonely  days  by 
the  seashore,  in  the  woods,  on  the  downs.  It  is  true  that  as  a 
rule  his  temperament  found  more  joy  in  rich  landscapes  and 
gardens  of  opulent  bloom,  than  in  the  wild,  the  savage,  the 
desolate.  But  no  man  who  was  not  a  true  lover  of  nature  for 
her  own  sake  could  have  written  the  "Ode  to  Memory,"  or 
this  stanza  from  "  Early  Spring  "  :  — 

The  woods  with  Uving  airs 

How  softly  fann'd, 
Light  airs  from  where  the  deep, 

All  down  the  sand, 
Is  breathing  in  his  sleep, 

Heard  by  the  land. 

Nor  is  there  any  lack  of  feeling  for  the  sublime  in  such  a  poem 
as  "  The  Voice  and  the  Peak  "  :  — 

The  voice  and  the  Peak 

Far  over  summit  and  lawn. 
The  lone  glow  and  long  roar 

Green-rushing  from  the  rosy  thrones  of  dawn ! 

It  would  be  easy  to  fill  many  pages  with  illustrations  of  Ten- 
nyson's extraordinary  vividness  of  perception  and  truthfulness 


QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY  73 

of  description  in  regard  to  nature.  He  excels,  first  of  all,  in 
delicate  pre-Raphaelite  work,  —  the  painting  of  the  flowers  in 
the  meadow,  the  buds  on  the  trees,  the  movements  of  waves 
and  streams,  the  birds  at  rest  and  on  the  wing.  Looking  at 
the  water,  he  sees  the 

Little  breezes  dusk  and  shiver 
Thro'  the  wave  that  runs  for  ever 
By  the  island  in  the  river 

Flowing  down  to  Camelot. 

[The  Lady  of  Shalott.] 

With  a  single  touch  he  gives  the  aspect  of  the  mill  stream :  — 

The  sleepy  pool  above  the  dam, 
The  pool  beneath  it  never  still. 

[The  Miller's  Daughter.] 

He  shows  us 

a  shoal 
Of  darting  fish,  that  on  a  summer  morn 
Adown  the  crystal  dykes  at  Camelot 
Come  slipping  o'er  their  shadows  on  the  sand, 
But  if  a  man  who  stands  upon  the  brink 
But  lift  a  shining  hand  against  the  sun, 
There  is  not  left  the  twinkle  of  a  fin 
Betwixt  the  cressy  islets  white  in  flower. 

[Geraint  and  Enid.] 

He  makes  us  see 

the  waterfall 

Which  ever  sounds  and  shines, 

A  pillar  of  white  light  upon  the  wall 

Of  purple  cliffs,  aloof  descried.  ^^  , 

^     ^  [Ode  to  Memory.] 

He  makes  us  hear,  through  the  nearer  voice  of  the  stream. 

The  drumming  thunder  of  the  huger  fall 

At  distance,  .  ,  ^  . , , 

[Geraint  and  Enid.] 

or 

The  scream  of  a  madden'd  beach  dragg'd  down  by  the  wave. 

[Maud.] 


74  QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

Does  he  speak  of  trees  ?     He  knows  the  difference  between 

the  poplars' 

noise  of  falling  showers, 

[Lancelot  and  Elaine.] 

and 

The  dry-tongued  laurels'  pattering  talk, 

[Maud.] 

and  the  voice  of  the  cedar, 

sighing  for  Lebanon 
In  the  long  breeze  that  streams  to  thy  delicious  East. 

[Maud.] 

He  sees  how 

A  million  emeralds  break  from  the  ruby-budded  lime, 

[Maud.] 

and  how  the  chestnut-buds  begin 

To  spread  into  the  perfect  fan, 
Above  the  teeming  ground. 

[Sir  Launcelot  and  Queen  Guinevere.] 

He  has  watched  the  hunting-dog  in  its  restless  sleep,  — 

Like  a  dog,  he  hunts  in  dreams,  — 

[Locksley  Hall.] 

and  noted  how  the  lonely  heron,  at  sundown, 

forgets  his  melancholy, 
Lets  down  his  other  leg,  and  stretching,  dreams 
Of  goodly  supper  in  the  distant  pool. 

[Gareth  and  Lynette.] 

There  is  a  line  in  In  Memoriam^  — 

Flits  by  the  sea-blue  bird  of  March,  — 

which  Tennyson  meant  to  describe  the  kingfisher.  A  friend 
criticised  it  and  said  that  some  other  bird  must  have  been 
intended,  because  "  the  kingfisher  shoots  by,  flashes  by,  but 
never  flits."  But,  in  fact,  to  flit,  which  means  "to  move 
lightly  and  swiftly,"  is  precisely  the  word  for  the  motion  of  this 


QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY  75 

bird,  as  it  darts  along  the  stream  with  even  wing-strokes,  shifting 
its  place  from  one  post  to  another.  Tennyson  gives  both  the 
colour  and  the  flight  of  the  kingfisher  with  absolute  precision. 
But  it  is  not  only  in  this  pre-Raphaehte  work  that  his 
extraordinary  skill  is  shown.  He  has  also  the  power  of  ren- 
dering vague,  wide  landscapes,  under  the  menacing  shadow  of 
a  coming  storm,  in  the  calm  of  an  autumnal  morning,  or  in  the 
golden  light  of  sunset.  Almost  always  such  landscapes  are 
coloured  by  the  prevailing  emotion  or  sentiment  of  the  poem. 
Tennyson  holds  with  Coleridge  that  much  of  what  we  see  in 
nature  is  the  reflection  of  our  own  life,  our  inmost  feelings  :  — 

"  Ours  is  her  wedding-garment,  ours  her  shroud." 

In  "  The  Gardener's  Daughter  "  Tennyson  describes  the  wed- 
ding-garment :  — 

All  the  land  in  flowery  squares, 
Beneath  a  broad  and  equal-blowing  wind. 
Smelt  of  the  coming  summer,  as  one  large  cloud 
Drew  downward :  but  all  else  of  heaven  was  pure 
Up  to  the  Sun,  and  May  from  verge  to  verge, 
And  May  with  me  from  head  to  heel. 

But  in  *'  Guinevere  "  it  is  the  shroud  :  — 

For  all  abroad, 
Beneath  a  moon  unseen  albeit  at  full. 
The  white  mist,  like  a  face-cloth  to  the  face, 
Clung  to  the  dead  earth,  and  the  land  was  still. 

3.  The  wide  range  of  human  sympathy  in  Tennyson's  work 
is  most  remarkable.  The  symbolic  poem,  "  MerHn  and  The 
Gleam,"  describes  his  poetic  life.  Following  the  Gleam,  — 
"  the  higher  poetic  imagination,"  —  he  passes  from  fairy-land 
into  the  real  world  and  interprets  the  characters  and  conflicts, 
the  labours  and  longings,  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 
He  speaks  for  childhood  in  "  The  May  Queen  "  and  "  In  the 


76  QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

Children's  Hospital " ;  for  motherhood  in  "  Rizpah "  and 
"Demeter";  for  seamen  in  *'The  Revenge"  and  "Colum- 
bus "  and  "The  Voyage  of  Maeldune"  and  "  Enoch  Arden  "  ; 
for  soldiers  in  "  The  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade "  and 
"The  Charge  of  the  Heavy  Brigade"  and  "The  Defence  of 
Lucknow";  for  philosophers  in  "Lucretius"  and  "The 
Ancient  Sage "  ;  for  the  half-crazed  ascetic  in  "St.  Simeon 
StyHtes,"  and  for  the  fearless  reformer  in  "Sir  John  Old- 
castle  " ;  for  the  painter  in  "  Romney's  Remorse  " ;  for  the 
rustic  in  the  "Northern  Farmer";  for  religious  enthusiasm, 
active,  in  "  Sir  Galahad,"  and  passive,  in  "  St.  Agnes'  Eve  "  ; 
for  peasant  Hfe  in  "Dora,"  and  for  princely  Hfe  in  "The 
Day-Dream  "  ;  for  lovers  of  different  types  in  "  Maud  "  and 
"Locksley  Hall"  and  "Aylmer's  Field"  and  "Love  and  Duty" 
and  "Happy"  and  "GEnone"  and  "The  Lover's  Tale"  and 
"  Lady  Clare." 

He  is  not,  it  must  be  admitted,  quite  as  deep,  as  inwardj^ 
as  searching  as  Wordsworth  is  in  some  of  his  peasant  portraits. 
There  is  a  revealing  touch  in  "  Michael,"  in  "  Margaret,"  in 
"Resolution  and  Independence,"  to  which  Tennyson  rarely, 
if  ever,  attains.  Nor  is  there  as  much  individuality  and 
intensity  in  his  pictures  as  we  find  in  the  best  of  Browning's 
dramatis  personcB,  hke  "  Saul "  and  "  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  "  and 
"  Andrea  del  Sarto  "  and  "  The  Flight  of  the  Duchess."  Ten- 
nyson brings  out  in  his  characters  that  which  is  most  natural 
and  normal.  He  does  not  delight,  as  Browning  does,  in  dis- 
covering the  strange,  the  eccentric.  Nor  has  he  Browning's 
extraordinary  acquaintance  with  the  technical  details  of  differ- 
ent arts  and  trades,  and  with  the  singular  features  of  certain 
epochs  of  history,  like  the  Renaissance. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  Tennyson  has  less  intellectual 
curiosity  in  his  work,  he  has  more  emotional  sympathy.  His 
characters  are  conceived  on  broader  lines;   they  are  more 


QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY  'JJ 

human  and  typical.  Even  when  he  finds  his  subject  in  some 
classic  myth,  it  is  the  human  element  that  he  brings  out. 
This  is  the  thing  that  moves  him.  He  studies  the  scene,  the 
period,  carefully  and  closely  in  order  to  get  the  atmosphere 
of  time  and  place.  But  these  are  subordinate.  The  main 
interest,  for  him,  lies  in  the  living  person  into  whose  place 
he  puts  himself  and  with  whose  voice  he  speaks.  Thus  in 
"  Tithonus  "  he  dwells  on  the  loneliness  of  one  who  must  "vary 
from  the  kindly  race  of  men  "  since  the  gift  of  "  cruel  immor- 
tality "  has  been  conferred  upon  him.  In  "  Demeter  and 
Persephone  "  the  most  beautiful  passage  is  that  in  which  the 
goddess-mother  tells  of  her  yearning  for  her  lost  child. 

4.  Tennyson's  work  is  marked  by  frequent  reference  to 
the  scientific  discoveries  and  social  movements  of  his  age. 
Wordsworth's  prophetic  vision  of  the  time  "  when  the  discov- 
eries of  the  chemist,  the  botanist,  or  mineralogist,  will  be  as 
proper  objects  of  the  poet's  art  as  any  upon  which  it  can  be 
employed,"  because  these  things  and  the  relations  under 
which  they  are  contemplated  will  be  so  familiarized  that  we 
shall  see  that  they  are  "  parts  of  our  life  as  enjoying  and  suf- 
fering beings,"  —  this  prediction  of  the  advent  of  science, 
transfigured  by  poetry,  as  "a  dear  and  genuine  inmate  of 
the  household  of  man,"  was  fulfilled,  at  least  in  part,  in  the 
poetry  of  Tennyson. 

In  "  The  Two  Voices  "  Tennyson  alludes  to  modern  oste- 
ology :  Before  the  little  ducts  began 

To  feed  thy  bones  with  lime,  and  ran 
Their  course,  till  thou  wert  also  man. 

In  the  twenty-first  section  of  In  Memoriam  he  notes  the 
discovery  of  the  satellite  of  Neptune  :  — 

'  When  Science  reaches  forth  her  arms 
To  feel  from  world  to  world,  and  charms 
Her  secret  from  the  latest  moon.' 


78  QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S    POETRY 

In  the  twenty-fourth  section  he  speaks  of  sun-spots  :  — 

The  very  source  and  fount  of  Day 
Is  dash'd  with  wandering  isles  of  night. 

In  the  thirty-fifth  section  he  alludes  to  the  process  of  denuda- 

The  sound  of  streams  that  swift  or  slow 
Draw  down  -Ionian  hills,  and  sow 
The  dust  of  continents  to  be. 

The  nebular  hypothesis  of  Laplace  and  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion are  conceived  and  expressed  with  wonderful  imaginative 
power  in  the  one  hundred  and  eighteenth  section.  In  the 
fourth  section  a  subtle  fact  of  physical  science  is  translated 
into  an  image  of  poetic  beauty :  — 

Break,  thou  deep  vase  of  chilling  tears, 
That  grief  hath  shaken  into  frost ! 

"  Locksley  Hall  "  is  full  of  echoes  of  the  scientific  inventions 
and  the  social  hopes  of  the  mid-century.  In  "  Locksley  Hall 
Sixty  Years  After"  the  old  man  speaks,  with  disenchanted  spirit, 
of  the  failure  of  many  of  these  hopes  and  the  small  value  of 
many  of  these  inventions,  but  he  still  holds  to  the  vision  of 
human  progress  guided  by  a  divine,  unseen  Power :  — 

When  the  schemes  and  all  the  systems,  Kingdoms  and  Republics  fall. 
Something  kindlier,  higher,  holier — all  for  each  and  each  for  all  ? 

All  the  full-brain,  half -brain  races,  led  by  Justice,  Love,  and  Truth ; 
All  the  millions  one  at  length  with  all  the  visions  of  my  youth  ? 

Earth  at  last  a  warless  world,  a  single  race,  a  single  tongue  — 
I  have  seen  her  far  away  —  for  is  not  Earth  as  yet  so  young? 

Every  tiger  madness  muzzled,  every  serpent  passion  kill'd, 
Every  grim  ravine  a  garden,  every  blazing  desert  till'd, 

Robed  in  universal  harvest  up  to  either  pole  she  smiles. 
Universal  ocean  softly  washing  all  her  warless  Isles. 


QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S    POETRY  79 

5.  As  in  its  form,  so  in  its  spirit,  the  poetry  of  Tenny- 
son is  marked  by  a  constant  and  controlling  sense  of  law 
and  order.  He  conceives  the  universe  under  the  sway  of 
great  laws,  physical  and  moral,  which  are  in  themselves 
harmonious  and  beautiful,  as  well  as  universal.  Disorder, 
discord,  disaster,  come  from  the  violation  of  these  laws. 
Beauty  lies  not  in  contrast  but  in  concord.  The  noblest 
character  is  not  that  in  which  a  single  faculty  or  passion 
is  raised  to  the  highest  pitch,  but  that  in  which  the  balance 
of  the  powers  is  kept,  and  the  life  unfolds  itself  in  a  well- 
rounded  fulness :  — 

That  mind  and  soul,  according  well, 
May  make  one  music  as  before, 
But  vaster. 

Such  is  the  character^  >%hich  is  drawn  from  memory  in  the 
description  of  Arthur  Hallam  in  In  Memoriani ;  and  from 
imagination  in  the  picture  of  King  Arthur  in  the  Idylls. 

Tennyson  belongs  in  the  opposite  camp  from  the  poets  of 
revolt.  To  him  such  a  vision  of  the  swift  emancipation  of 
society  as  Shelley  gives  in  "  Prometheus  Unbound,"  or  "  The 
Revolt  of  Islam,"  was  not  merely  impossible ;  it  was  wildly 
absurd,  a  dangerous  dream.  His  faith  in  the  advance  of 
mankind  rested  on  two  bases ;  first,  his  intuitive  belief  in  the 
benevolence  of  the  general  order  of  the  universe  :  — 

Oh  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill :  — 

and  second,  his  practical  confidence  in  the  success  —  or  at 
least  in  the  immediate  usefulness  —  of  the  efforts  of  men  to 
make  the  world  around  them  better  little  by  little.  Evolution, 
not  revolution,  was  his  watchword. 

Yet  I  doubt  not  thro'  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs, 


8o  QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

is  his  cry  in  the  first  *' Locksley  Hall";  and  in  the  second 
he  says, 

Follow  Light,  and  do  the  Right  —  for  man  can  half -control  his  doom  — 
Till  you  see  the  deathless  Angel  seated  in  the  vacant  tomb. 

In  the  patriotic  poems  we  find  that  Tennyson's  love  of 
country  is  sane,  sober,  steadfast,  thoughtful.  He  dislikes  the 
*'  blind  hysterics  of  the  Celt,"  and  fears  the  red  *'  fool-fury 
of  the  Seine."     He  praises  England  as 

A  land  of  settled  government, 

A  land  of  old  and  just  renov^^n, 
Where  freedom  slowly  broadens  down 

From  precedent  to  precedent. 

His  favourite  national  heroes  are  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  type, 
sturdy,  resolute,  self-contained,  following  the  path  of  duty. 
He  rejoices  not  only  in  the  service  which  England  has  rendered 
to  the  cause  of  law-encircled  liberty,  but  in  the  way  in  which 
she  has  rendered  it :  — 

Whatever  harmonies  of  law 

The  growing  world  assume, 
Thy  work  is  thine  —  The  single  note 
From  that  deep  chord  which  Hampden  smote 

Will  vibrate  to  the  doom. 

[England  and  America  in  1782.] 

He  praises  the  peaceful  reformer  as  the  chief  benefactor  of 
his  country :  — 

Not  he  that  breaks  the  dams,  but  he 

That  thro'  the  channels  of  the  State 
Convoys  the  people's  wish,  is  great ; 
His  name  is  pure,  his  fame  is  free. 

[Contributed  to  the  Shakespearean  Show-Book,  1884.] 

He  is  a  republican  at  heart,  holding  that  the  Queen's  throne 

must  rest 

Broad-based  upon  her  people's  will, 

[To  the  Queen.] 


QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S    POETRY  8l 

and  he  does  not  hesitate  to  express  his  confidence  in 

our  slowly-grown 
And  crown' d  Republic's  crowning  common-sense. 

[Epilogue  to  Idylls  of  the  King.] 

But  he  has  no  faith  in  the  unguided  and  ungoverned  mob. 
He  calls  Freedom 

Thou  loather  of  the  lawless  crown 

As  of  the  lawless  crowd. 

[Freedom,  1884.] 

It  has  been  said  that  his  poetry  shows  no  trace  of  sympathy 
with  the  struggles  of  the  people  to  resist  tyranny  and  defend 
their  liberties  with  the  sword.  This  is  not  true.  In  one  of 
his  earUest  sonnets  he  speaks  with  enthusiasm  of  Poland's 
fight  for  freedom,  and  in  one  of  his  latest  he  hails  the  same 
spirit  and  the  same  eifort  in  Montenegro.  In  "  The  Third  of 
February,  1852,"  he  expresses  his  indignation  at  the  coup  diktat 
by  which  Louis  Napoleon  destroyed  the  French  Republic,  and 
praises  the  revolutions  which  overthrew  Charles  I  and  James 
II.  He  dedicates  a  sonnet  to  Victor  Hugo,  the  "stormy  voice 
of  France."  With  the  utmost  deliberation  and  distinctness  he 
justifies  the  cause  of  the  colonies  in  the  American  Revolution  : 
once  in  "England  and  America  in  1782,"  and  again  in  the 
ode  for  the  "  Opening  of  the  Indian  and  Colonial  Exhibition," 
1886. 

It  has  been  said  that  he  has  no  sympathy  with  the  modern 
idea  of  the  patriotism  of  humanity,  —  that  his  love  of  his  own 
country  hides  from  him  the  vision  of  universal  liberty  and 
brotherhood.  This  is  not  true.  He  speaks  of  it  in  many 
places,  — in  "Locksley  Hall,"  in  "Victor  Hugo,"  in  "The 
Making  of  Man,"  —  and  in  the  "Ode  sung  at  the  Opening  of 
the  International  Exhibition,"  1861,  he  urges  free  commerce 
and  peaceful  cooperation  among  the  nations  :  — 


82  QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

Till  each  man  find  his  own  in  all  men's  good, 

And  all  men  work  in  noble  brotherhood, 

Breaking  their  mailed  fleets  and  armed  towers. 

And  ruling  by  obeying  Nature's  powers. 

And  gathering  all  the  fruits  of  earth  and  crown'd  with  all  her  flowers. 

It  may  be,  as  the  Rev.  Stopford  Brooke  says  in  his  book  on 
Tennyson,  that  this  view  of  things  is  less  "  poetic  "  than  that 
which  is  presented  by  the  poets  of  revolt,  that  it  "  lowers  the 
note  of  beauty,  of  fire,  of  aspiration,  of  passion."  But  after 
all,  it  was  Tennyson's  real  view  and  he  could  not  well  deny  or 
conceal  it.  The  important  question  is  whether  it  is  true  and 
just.  And  that  is  the  first  question  which  a  great  poet  asks. 
He  does  not  lend  himself  to  the  proclamation  of  follies  and 
falsehoods,  however  fiery,  merely  for  the  sake  of  being  more 
"  poetic." 

In  Tennyson's  love  poems,  while  there  is  often  an  intensity 
of  passion,  there  is  also  a  singular  purity  of  feeling,  a  sense  of 
reverence  for  the  mystery  of  love,  and  a  profound  loyalty  to  the 
laws  which  it  is  bound  to  obey  in  a  harmonious  and  well-ordered 
world.  True,  he  takes  the  romantic,  rather  than  the  classical, 
attitude  towards  love.  It  comes  secretly,  suddenly,  by  inexph- 
cable  ways.  It  is  irresistible,  absorbing,  the  strongest  as  well 
as  the  most  precious  thing  in  the  world.  But  he  does  not 
therefore  hold  that  it  is  a  thing  apart  from  the  rest  of  life, 
exempt,  uncontrollable,  lawless.  On  the  contrary,  it  should 
be,  in  its  perfection,  at  once  the  inspiration  and  the  consum- 
mation of  all  that  is  best  in  Hfe.  In  love,  truth  and  honour 
and  fidelity  and  courage  and  unselfishness  should  come  to 
flower. 

There  is  none  of  the  tropical  iridescence  of  decadent 
erotomania  in  Tennyson's  love  poetry.  The  fatal  shame  of 
that  morbid  and  consuming  fever  of  the  flesh  is  touched  in 
the  description  of  the  madness  of  Lucretius,  in  "  Balin  and 


QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S    POETRY  83 

Balan,"  and  in  "  Merlin  and  Vivien  " ;  but  it  is  done  in  a  way 
that  reveals  the  essential  hatefulness  of  lubricity. 

There  is  no  lack  of  warmth  and  bright  colour  in  the  poems 
which  speak  of  true  love ;  but  it  is  the  glow  of  health  instead 
of  the  hectic  flush  of  disease ;  not  the  sickly  hues  that  mask 
the  surface  of  decay,  but  the  livelier  iris  that  the  spring-time 
brings  to  the  neck  of  the  burnished  dove. 

He  does  not  fail  to  see  the  tragedies  of  love.  There  is  the 
desperate  ballad  of  "Oriana,"  the  sombre  story  of  "Aylmer's 
Field,"  the  picture  of  the  forsaken  Mariana  in  her  moated 
grange,  the  pathetic  idyll  of  Elaine  who  died  for  love  of 
Lancelot.  But  the  tragic  element  in  these  poems  comes  from 
the  thwarting  of  love  by  circumstance,  not  from  anything 
shameful  or  lawless  in  the  passion  itself. 

In  "  The  Gardener's  Daughter  "  the  story  of  a  pure  and 
simple  love  is  told  with  a  clean  rapture  that  seems  to  make 
earth  and  sky  glow  with  new  beauty,  and  with  a  reticence 
that  speaks  not  of  shallow  feeling,  but  of  reverent  emotion, 

refusing  to  fling  open 

the  doors  that  bar 
The  secret  bridal  chambers  of  the  heart. 

In  The  Princess^  at  the  end,  triumphant  love  rises  to  the 
height  of  prophecy,  foretelling  the  harmony  of  manhood  and 
womanhood  in  the  world's  great  bridals  :  — 

'  Dear,  but  let  us  type  them  now 
In  our  own  lives,  and  this  proud  watchword  rest 
Of  equal ;  seeing  either  sex  alone 
Is  half  itself,  and  in  true  marriage  lies 
Nor  equal,  nor  unequal :  each  fulfils 
Defect  in  each,  and  always  thought  in  thought, 
Purpose  in  purpose,  will  in  will,  they  grow, 
The  single  pure  and  perfect  animal. 
The  two-cell'd  heart  beating,  with  one  full  stroke, 
Life.' 


84  QUALITIES    OF  TENNYSON'S    POETRY 

There  are  two  of  Tennyson's  poems  in  which  the  subject  of 
love  is  treated  in  very  different  ways,  but  with  an  equally  close 
and  evident  relation  to  the  sense  of  harmony  and  law  which 
pervades  his  poetry.  In  one  of  them,  it  seems  to  me,  the 
treatment  is  wonderfully  successful ;  the  poet  makes  good  his 
design.  In  the  other,  I  think,  he  comes  a  little  short  of  it 
and  leaves  us  unsatisfied  and  questioning. 

Maud  is  among  the  most  purely  impassioned  presentations 

of  a  love-story  since  Shakespeare's  Romeo  and  Juliet.     It  not 

only  tells  in  music  the  growth  of  a  deep,  strong,  absorbing  love, 

victorious  over  obstacles,  but  it  shows  the  redeeming,  ennobling 

power  of  such  a  passion,  which  leads  the  selfish  hero  out  of  his 

bitterness  and  narrowness  and   makes  him  able  at  the  last 

to  say. 

Comfort  her,  comfort  her,  all  things  good, 

While  I  am  over  the  sea ! 

Let  me  and  my  passionate  love  go  by, 

But  speak  to  her  all  things  holy  and  high, 

Whatever  happen  to  me  ! 

Me  and  my  harmful  love  go  by ; 

But  come  to  her  waking,  find  her  asleep, 

Powers  of  the  height.  Powers  of  the  deep, 

And  comfort  her  tho'  I  die. 

The  tragedy  of  the  poem  is  wrought  not  by  love,  but  by 
another  passion,  lawless,  discordant,  uncontrolled,  —  the  pas- 
sion of  proud  hatred  which  brings  about  the  quarrel  with 
Maud's  brother,  the  fatal  duel,  her  death,  the  exile  and  mad- 
ness of  her  lover.  But  the  poem  does  not  end  in  darkness, 
after  all,  for  he  awakes  again  to  "the  better  mind,"  and  the  love 
whose  earthly  consummation  his  own  folly  has  marred  abides 
with  him  as  the  inspiration  of  a  nobler  life.  The  hero  may  be 
wrong  in  thinking  that  the  Crimean  War  is  to  be  a  blessing  to 
England  and  to  the  world.     But  he  is  surely  right  in  saying, 

It  is  better  to  fight  for  the  good  than  to  rail  at  the  ill. 


QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY  85 

In  the  Idylls  of  the  King  there  are  two  main  threads  of  love 
running  through  the  many-figured  tapestry  :  Arthur's  love  for 
Guinevere,  loyal,  royal,  but  somewhat  cold  and  ineffectual : 
Guinevere's  love  for  Lancelot,  disloyal  and  untrue,  but  warm 
and  potent.  It  is  the  secret  influence  of  this  lawless  passion, 
infecting  the  court,  that  breaks  up  the  Round  Table,  and 
brings  the  kingdom  to  ruin  and  the  King  to  his  defeat.  In 
"  Guinevere  "  Tennyson  departs  from  the  story  as  it  is  told  by 
Malory  and  introduces  a  scene  entirely  of  his  own  invention : 
the  last  interview  between  Arthur,  on  his  way  to  *'  that  great 
battle  in  the  west,"  and  the  fallen  Queen,  hiding  in  the  convent 
at  Almesbury.  It  is  a  very  noble  scene ;  noble  in  its  setting  in 
the  moon-swathed  pallor  of  the  dead  winter  night ;  noble  in 
its  austere  splendour  of  high  diction  and  slow-moving  verse, 
intense  with  solemn  passion,  bare  to  the  heart ;  noble  in  its 
conception  of  the  King's  godlike  forgiveness  and  of  Guine- 
vere's remorse  and  agony  of  shame,  too  late  to  countervail 
the  harm  that  she  had  done  on  earth,  though  not  too  late  to 
win  the  heavenly  pardon.  All  that  Arthur  says  of  the  evil 
wrought  by  unlawful  and  reckless  love  is  true  :  — 

The  children  born  of  thee  are  sword  and  fire, 
Red  ruin,  and  the  breaking  up  of  laws. 

All  that  he  says  of  the  crime  that  it  would  be  to  condone  the 
Queen's  sin,  for  the  sake  of  prudence  and  peace,  reseating  her 
in  her  place  of  light, 

The  mockery  of  my  people  and  their  bane, 

is  also  true,  though  it  seems  at  the  moment  a  little  too  much 
like  preaching.  But  there  is  one  thing  lacking,  —  one  thing 
that  is  necessary  to  make  the  scene  altogether  convincing : 
some  trace  of  human  sympathy  in  Arthur's  "vast  pity,"  some 
consciousness  of  fault  or  failure  on  his  part  in  not  giving 
Guinevere  all  that  her  nature  needed  to  guard  her  from  the 


S6  QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

temptations  of  a  more  vivid  though  a  lower  passion.  Splendid 
as  his  words  of  pardon  are,  and  piercingly  pathetic  as  is  that 
last  farewell  of  love,  still  loyal  though  defrauded ;  yet  he  does 
not  quite  win  us.  He  is  more  godlike  than  it  becomes  a 
man  to  be.  He  is  too  sure  that  he  has  never  erred,  too  con- 
scious that  he  is  above  weakness  or  reproach.  We  remember 
the  lonely  Lancelot  in  his  desolate  castle;  we  think  of  his 
courtesy,  his  devotion,  his  splendid  courage,  his  winning  ten- 
derness, his  ardour,  the  unwavering  passion  by  force  of  which 

His  honour  rooted  in  dishonour  stood, 
'  And  faith  unfaithful  kept  him  falsely  true. 

Was  it  wonder  that  Guinevere,  seeing  the  King  absorbed  in 
affairs  of  state,  remote,  abstracted,  inaccessible,  yielded  to  this 
nearer  and  more  intimate  joy  ?  Sin  it  was  :  shame  it  was : 
that  Tennyson  makes  us  see  clearly.  But  how  could  it  have 
been  otherwise  ?  Was  not  the  breaking  of  the  law  the  revenge 
that  nature  herself  took  for  a  need  unsatisfied,  a  harmony  un- 
completed and  overlooked?  This  is  the  question  that  remains 
unanswered  at  the  close  of  the  Idy/Zs  of  the  King,  And  there- 
fore I  think  the  poem  unsatisfactory  in  its  treatment  of  love. 

But  though  Tennyson  avoids  this  question,  and  lets  Lancelot 
slip  out  of  the  poem  at  last  without  a  word,  disappearing  like 
a  shadow,  he  never  falters  in  his  allegiance  to  his  main  princi- 
ple, —  the  supremacy  of  law  and  order.  This  indeed  is  the 
central  theme  of  the  epic  :  the  right  of  soul  to  rule  over  sense 
and  the  ruin  that  comes  when  the  relation  is  reversed.  The 
poem  ends  tragically.  But  above  the  wreck  of  a  great  human 
design  the  poet  sees  the  vision  of  a  God  who  "  fulfils  Himself 
in  many  ways  " ;  and  after  earth's  confusions  and  defeats  he 
sees  the  true-hearted  King  enthroned  in  the  spiritual  city  and 
the  repentant  Queen  passing 

To  where  beyond  these  voices  there  is  peace. 


QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S    POETRY  8/ 

6.  A  religious  spirit  pervades  and  marks  the  poetry  of 
Tennyson.  His  view  of  the  world  and  of  human  life  —  his 
view  even  of  the  smallest  flower  that  blooms  in  the  world  — 
is  illumined  through  and  through  by  his  faith  in  the  Divine 
presence  and  goodness  and  power.  This  faith  was  not  always 
serene  and  untroubled.  It  was  won  after  a  hard  conflict  with 
doubt  and  despondency,  the  traces  of  which  may  be  seen  in 
such  poems  as  "The  Two  Voices"  and  "The  Vision  of  Sin." 
But  the  issue  was  never  really  in  danger.  He  was  not  a 
doubter  seeking  to  win  a  faith.  He  was  a  behever  defending 
himself  against  misgivings,  fighting  to  hold  fast  that  which  he 
felt  to  be  essential  to  his  Hfe.  The  success  of  his  struggle  is 
recorded  in  In  Memoriafn^  which  rises  through  suffering  and 
perplexity  to  a  lofty  and  unshaken  trust  in 

The  truths  that  never  can  be  proved, 
Until  we  close  with  all  we  loved 
And  all  we  flow  from,  soul  in  soul. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  trace  in  his  religious  poems  of  this 
period  the  influence  of  the  theology  of  the  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice, 
who  was  one  of  his  closest  friends.  The  truths  which  Maurice 
presented  most  frequently,  such  as  the  immanence  of  God 
in  nature,  man's  filial  relation  to  Him,  the  reahty  of  human 
brotherhood,  the  final  victory  of  Love ;  the  difficulties  which 
he  recognized  in  connection  with  these  truths,  such  as  the  dis- 
orders and  conflicts  in  nature,  the  apparent  reckless  waste  of 
Hfe,  the  sins  and  miseries  of  mankind ;  and  the  way  in  which 
he  met  and  overcame  these  difficulties,  not  by  abstract  reason- 
ing, nor  by  a  reference  to  authority,  but  by  an  appeal  to  the 
moral  and  spiritual  necessities  and  intuitions  of  the  human 
heart,  —  all  these  are  presented  in  Tennyson's  poetry. 

In  later  life  there  seems  to  have  been  a  recurrence  of 
questionings,    shown    in    such    poems    as    "  Despair,"    "  De 


88  QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

Profundis,"  "The  Ancient  Sage,"  "Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years 
After,"  "  Vastness,"  "  By  an  Evolutionist."  But  this  was  not 
so  much  a  conflict  arising  from  within,  as  a  protest  against  the 
tendencies  of  what  he  called  "  a  terrible  age  of  unfaith,"  an 
effort  to  maintain  the  rights  of  the  spirit  against  scientific 
materialism.  Later  still  the  serene,  triumphant  mood  of  the 
proem  to  In  Memoriam  was  repeated  in  "  Crossing  the  Bar," 
"The  Silent  Voices,"  "Faith,"  "The  Death  of  the  Duke  of 
Clarence,"  and  he  reposed  upon 

that  Love  which  is  and  was 
My  Father  and  my  Brother  and  my  God. 

In  spite  of  his  declared  unwilHngness  to  formulate  his  creed, 
arising  partly  from  his  conviction  that  humility  was  the  right 
intellectual  attitude  in  the  presence  of  the  great  mysteries,  and 
partly  from  the  feeling  that  men  would  not  understand  him  if 
he  tried  to  put  his  belief  into  definite  forms,  it  is  by  no  means 
impossible  to  discover  in  his  poetry  certain  clear  and  vivid 
visions  of  religious  truths  from  which  his  poetic  life  drew 
strength  and  beauty.  Three  of  these  truths  stand  out  distinct 
and  dominant. 

The  first  is  the  real,  personal,  conscious  life  of  God.  "  Take 
that  away,"  said  he,  "  and  you  take  away  the  backbone  of  the 
Universe."  Tennyson  is  not  a  theological  poet  like  Milton 
or  Cowper,  nor  even  like  Wordsworth  or  Browning.  But 
hardly  anything  that  he  has  written  could  have  been  written 
as  it  is,  but  for  his  underlying  faith  that  God  lives,  and  knows, 
and  loves.  This  faith  is  clearly  expressed  in  "The  Higher 
Pantheism."  It  is  not  really  pantheism  at  all,  for  while  the 
natural  world  is  regarded  as  "  the  Vision  of  Him  who  reigns," 
it  is  also  the  sign  and  symbol  that  the  human  soul  is  distinct 
from  Him.  All  things  reveal  Him,  but  man's  sight  and  hear- 
ing are  darkened  so  that  he  cannot  understand  the  revelation. 


QUALITIES  OF  TENNYSON'S  POETRY  89 

God  is  in  all  things :  He  is  with  all  souls,  but  He  is  not  to 
be  identified  with  the  human  spirit,  which  has  "  power  to  feel 
*  I  am  I.'  "  Fellowship  with  Him  is  to  be  sought  and  found 
in  prayer. 

Speak  to  Him  thou  for  He  hears,  and  Spirit  with  Spirit  can  meet  — 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than  hands  and  feet. 

This  confidence  in  the  reality  of  prayer  is  expressed  in  many 
of  Tennyson's  deeper  poems.  We  find  it  in  *'  Enoch  Arden," 
in  "  St.  Agnes'  Eve,"  in  "  The  Palace  of  Art,"  in  In  Memoriam^ 
in  **  The  Two  Voices,"  in  the  "  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,"  in  "  Doubt  and  Prayer,"  in  "  Elaine,"  in 
"Guinevere,"  in  "Morte  d'Arthur":  — 

Pray  for  my  soul.     More  things  are  wrought  by  prayer 
Than  this  world  dreams  of. 

Tennyson's  optimism  was  dependent  upon  his  faith  in  a 
God  to  whom  men  can  pray.  It  was  not  a  matter  of  tempera- 
ment, like  Browning's  optimism.  Tennyson  inherited  from  his 
father  a  strain  of  gloomy  blood,  a  tendency  to  despondency. 
He  escaped  from  it  only  by  learning  to  trust  in  the  Divine 
wisdom  and  love  :  — 

That  God  which  ever  lives  and  loves, 

One  God,  one  law,  one  element, 

And  one  far-off  divine  event. 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 

The  second  truth  which  stands  out  in  the  poetry  of  Tenny- 
son is  the  freedom  of  the  human  will.    This  is  a  mystery  :  — 

Our  wills  are  ours,  we  know  not  how. 

It  is  also  an  indubitable  reality  :  — 

This  main-miracle,  that  thou  art  thou, 

With  power  on  thine  own  act  and  on  the  world. 

[De  Profundis.] 


90  QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

The  existence  of  such  liberty  of  action  in  created  beings 
implies  a  self-limitation  on  the  part  of  God,  but  it  is  essential 
to  moral  responsibility  and  vital  communion  with  the  Divine. 
If  man  is  only  a  "  magnetic  mockery,"  a  "  cunning  cast  in 
clay,"  he  has  no  real  life  of  his  own,  nothing  to  give  back 
to  God.  The  joy  of  effort  and  the  glory  of  virtue  depend 
upon  freedom.  This  is  the  meaning  of  Enid's  Song,  in  "  The 
Marriage  of  Geraint "  :  — 

For  man  is  man  and  master  of  his  fate. 

This  is  the  central  thought  of  that  strong  little  poem  called 

"Will":  — 

O  well  for  him  whose  will  is  strong ! 
He  suffers,  but  he  will  not  suffer  long ; 
He  suffers,  but  he  cannot  suffer  wrong. 

This  is  the  theme  of  the  last  lyric  of  In  Memoriam  :  — 

O  living  will  that  shalt  endure 

When  all  that  seems  shall  suffer  shock, 
Rise  in  the  spiritual  rock, 

Flow  thro'  our  deeds  and  make  them  pure. 

The  third  truth  which  is  vitally  embodied  in  Tennyson's 
poems  is  the  assurance  of  Life  after  Death.  This  he  believed 
in  most  deeply  and  uttered  most  passionately.  He  felt  that 
the  present  life  would  be  poor  and  pitiful,  almost  worthless 
and  unendurable,  without  the  hope  of  Immortality.  The 
rolling  lines  of  "  Vastness  "  are  a  long  protest  against  the  cold 
doctrine  that  death  ends  all.  "  Wages  "  is  a  swift  utterance  of 
the  hope  which  inspires  Virtue  :  — 

Give  her  the  wages  of  going  on,  and  not  to  die. 

The  second  "  Locksley  Hall,"  the  Wellington  Ode,  "The 
May  Queen,"  "Guinevere,"  "Enoch  Arden,"  "The  Deserted 


QUALITIES   OF   TENNYSON'S   POETRY  91 

House,"  "The  Poet's  Song,"  "Happy,"  the  lines  on  "The 
Death  of  the  Duke  of  Clarence,"  "The  Silent  Voices,"  — it 
is  not  possible  to  enumerate  the  poems  in  which  the  clear  faith 
in  a  future  life  finds  expression.  In  Memoriam  is  altogether 
filled  and  glorified  with  the  passion  of  Immortality :  not  a 
vague  and  impersonal  survival  in  other  forms,  but  a  contin- 
uance of  individual  life  beyond  the  grave  :  — 

Eternal  form  shall  still  divide 
The  eternal  soul  from  all  beside ; 
And  I  shall  know  him  when  we  meet. 

It  is  a  vain  and  idle  thing  for  men  who  are  themselves 
indifferent  to  the  spiritual  aspects  of  life,  or  perhaps  hostile 
and  contemptuous  towards  a  religious  view  of  the  universe,  to 
declare  that  there  is  no  place  in  poetry  for  such  subjects,  and 
to  sneer  at  every  poem  in  which  they  appear  as  "  a  disguised 
sermon."  No  doubt  there  are  many  alleged  poems  dealing 
with  religion  which  deserve  no  better  name  :  versified  exposi- 
tions of  theological  dogma  :  creeds  in  metre  :  moral  admoni- 
tions tagged  with  rhyme ;  a  weariness  to  the  flesh.  But  so 
there  are  alleged  poems  which  deal  with  the  facts  of  the  visible' 
world  and  of  human  history  in  the  same  dull  didactic  manner  : 
botanical  treatises  in  verse  :  rhymed  chronicles :  doctrinaire 
dramas.  The  fault,  in  both  cases,  lies  not  in  the  subjects,  but 
in  the  spirit  in  which  they  are  approached. 

It  is  not  the  presence  of  religion  that  spoils  religious  verse. 
It  is  the  absence  of  poetry.  Poetry  is  vision.  Poetry  is  music. 
Poetry  is  an  overflow  of  wonder  and  joy,  pity  and  love.  Truths 
Which  lie  in  the  spiritual  realm  have  as  much  power  to  stir  the 
heart  to  this  overflow  as  truths  which  lie  in  the  physical  realm. 
There  is  an  imaginative  vision  of  the  meaning  of  religious  truths 
—  a  swift  flashing  of  their  significance  upon  the  inward  eye,  a 
sudden  thrilling  of  their  music  through  the  inward  ear  —  which 


92  QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S   POETRY 

is  as  full  of  beauty  and  wonder,  as  potent  to  "  surprise  us  by  a 
fine  excess,"  as  any  possible  human  experience.  It  is  poetic 
in  the  very  highest  sense  of  the  word.  There  may  be  poetry, 
and  very  admirable  poetry,  without  it.  But  the  poet  who 
never  sees  it,  nor  sings  of  it,  in  whose  verse  there  is  no  ray 
of  light,  no  note  of  music,  from  beyond  the  range  of  the  five 
senses,  has  never  reached  the  heights  nor  sounded  the  depths 
of  human  nature. 

The  influence  of  Tennyson's  poetry  in  revealing  the  reality 
and  beauty  of  three  great  religious  beliefs  —  the  existence  of 
the  Divine  Spirit  who  is  our  Father,  the  freedom  of  the  human 
will,  and  the  personal  life  after  death  —  was  deep,  far-reaching, 
and  potent.  He  stood  among  the  doubts  and  conflicts  of  the 
last  century  as  a  witness  for  the  things  that  are  invisible  and 
eternal :  the  things  that  men  may  forget  if  they  will,  but  if 
they  forget  them  their  hearts  wither,  and  the  springs  of  inspi- 
ration run  dry.  His  rich  and  musical  verse  brought  a  message 
of  new  cheer  and  courage  to  the  young  men  of  that  question- 
ing age  who  were  fain  to  defend  their  spiritual  heritage  against 
the  invasions  of  a  hard  and  fierce  materialism.  In  the  vital 
conflict  for  the  enlargement  of  faith  to  embrace  the  real  dis- 
coveries of  science,  he  stood  forth  as  a  leader.  In  the  great 
silent  reaction  from  the  solitude  of  a  consistent  skepticism, 
his  voice  was  a  clear-toned  bell  calling  the  unwilling  exiles  of 
belief  to  turn  again  and  follow  the  guidance  of  the  Spirit.  No 
new  arguments  were  his.  But  the  sweetness  of  a  poet's  per- 
suasion, the  splendour  of  high  truths  embodied  in  a  poet's 
imagination,  the  convincing  beauty  of  noble  beliefs  set  forth 
in  clear  dream  and  solemn  vision,  —  these  were  the  powers 
that  he  employed. 

And  if  the  age  of  doubt  in  which  he  lived  has  passed,  not 
into  an  age  of  denial,  but,  as  it  seems,  into  the  dawn  of  a  new 
age  of  belief,  they  who  look  and  long  for  the  light  of  spiritual 


QUALITIES   OF  TENNYSON'S    POETRY  93 

life  to  rise  yet  higher  and  spread  yet  more  gloriously,  will 
honour  Tennyson  not  only  as  a  poet,  but  also  as  a  prophet,  — 
a  defender  of  the  inward  treasures  that  make  life  worth  living, 
an  interpreter  of  the  true  meaning  of  the  world,  a  seer  who 
foresaw  the  victory  of  faith  and  helped  mightily  to  win  it. 


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